Olathe Marathon

The Olathe Marathon is less than 48 hours away. I am in charge of the start and once the race starts, I am going to run it. My target race is the Colorado Marathon in Fort Collins in May. I am scheduled to do 18 miles this weekend, so I will do the marathon. It is so much easier to run a race under race conditions than do just a training run. My strategy is to do the 18 or so miles at my training pace and then limp it in from there. Right now, I am running well (for me anyway). I ran my 16 mile training run last week in about 2:30 and it was pretty easy.....so it has my hopes up that I have a chance to have a nice race in Colorado. My marathon PR is 4:17, which is a 9:49 pace and was set about 3.5 years ago at Phoenix. The Colorado marathon is slightly down hill (I think it averages about a -0.6% grade) and is known for its high number of Boston qualifiers.....so I am shooting for a 4:15 or better. I will learn a lot after this Saturday to see if I can continue to repeat the pace I have been running at for 18+ miles. If I am at the 18 mile mark by 2:50 and feeling okay, I think I am in pretty good shape to PR in Colorado. We will see in about 48 hours......