So we leave tomorrow for Orlando. We’re staying at a place a few miles from the entrance of the park, so I should be able to get there fairly easily. Everyone says leave the room at 4. 4! Gosh, so early! I always run around 5, but I’ll get up at 4, leave right away and have to wait until 6 to race. Still not too bad. My husband will drive my mom and the kids over; I’ll take her car to the race.

This training period was not bad. Since I was running 10-13 on Saturdays I only had to increase to 19, which was 6 miles. I did this in about 8 weeks. Slowly, to make sure my knees held out. I do have some knee pain that started yesterday, which is weird since I have been tapering. I think it is associated with bike riding, but my next goal is a triathlon so I hope that it goes away. Maybe just too much with the high running distances.

I only lost one and a half pounds during training this time! I’m really proud of myself. It’s a lot to keep on when you are doing these high mileage runs and I have posted before that I have a tendency to get too thin. My metabolism must be through the roof, and while I know for some people this would be a blessing, for me I have always been a little self concious about being too thin.   I’m glad i was able to maintain my weight this time around. I’m not sure how I did it, but I do know the scale helped. When I dipped down, I ate more. This past week I think I’ve taken in 54,090 calories! I can’t stop eating!

I’m pretty much packed up for the race. I am taking:

• 2 shirts depending on weather (one long sleeved, one short)
• a long sports bra I can wear as a top if it gets hot
• sunscreen (small bottle)
• Ipod with music (which reminds me, have to get that finished today!)
• Garmin forerunner
• 2 power bars, one carb, one protein. I’ll do the carb one first, then the protein one later in the run (I eat when I run; I was famished last time!)
• some fig bars if I can fit them in my waist belt
• 2 water bottles filled with gatorade
• my health waiver, in case I croak on the course (don’t laugh, this is my biggest fear: becoming overly dehydrated like I did when I did the training run when we were house hunting last fall)
• a disposable camera to take pictures around the park as I run. This I am looking forward to most as I have never done this during a race before. However, if I want to do the fifty marathons in fifty states, I sure will see a lot of cool stuff over the years! I think eventually I’d like to get a really, really small digital camera to carry though.

My mom and my sister in law and her boyfriend are all coming to the suite the night before. I’m carbo loading them with spaghetti and texas toast! Then I plan to get into bed at 8 when my kids go down, just as I did last night and will do tonight. I will read my Obama book Dreams of my Father. I haven’t started it yet. I just finished To Kill a Mockingbird, which the entire town I live in is reading.  It was good if not a bit sad! I was asleep by 9:30 last night, and I’m hoping to have a great night’s sleep tonight since I don’t know how well I will sleep tomorrow.

The other night I dreamt that I was participating in a triathlon and then realized the next day was the marathon. Stressed? I think not lol! (Ok, perhaps a little!)

And this is insane, but it is forecasting rain! Same as my last marathon! I thought for sure I’d be battling heat, not wetness. I can’t believe this! It must be my marathon curse lol. Well as long as there is no thunder and as long as my kids and mom and husband can come see me at the finish line I guess I’ll be okay.

So, I’m off for now. I will post pictures once I survive the run. I’m nervous, but I just keep thinking, “I’ll do as much as I can do.” Last time I said I’d do a half, I knew I could do that, and I did the full, even in the torrential downpour.

So, let’s just hope the skies are friendly and the 26.2 is not too brutal!

Happy Running!