With less than 2 weeks to go until the race, it's all downhill from here. All the hard training has been done, and now it's a matter of freshening up and getting ready for a damn hard running race!!!
It's funny that before almost every race I do - especially the long races - I wonder if I've done enough training, whether it was the best, most suitable training, and usually wish I had more time to do extra training. I know that lining up at the start there'll be other guys (and girls) who've run further in training, up more hills, at a faster pace than I have. Plus most the guys I'll be competing against have done the race before and know to expect, how the track looks, how steep the hills are, how to pace themselves and more. It will be easy to be intimidated by that, but on the other hand I've done what I can, what my body has been able to cope with, so I hope that will good enough.
But what is good enough? I've got a few goals in mind for the race, but in reality it's hard since there's so much unknown about the event, so all my predictions, hopes and expectations have been based on guess work. Perhaps the best prediction has come from the race organizers who in assessing the credentials and abilities of each runner - whether from previous attempts, or (in my case) separate race results - have ranked me at #10. So I guess that means I'll be wearing #10 on my race bib, which is also great incentive to try and better that as finish placing.
From here on my thinking starts to turn towards the logistics of the race - getting there, nutrition, gear, and more. I'm a good planner so thinking through these parts is pretty straight forward. The hardest part is choosing which pair of shoes to wear, which is out of 3 pairs. It's a race, so that rules out my heavy training shoes. It's too long and rough to wear race flats. So the choice of shoe for me is some light-weight training shoes - a nice mix of cushioning, weight and comfort.
But it's not that simple since there's some river crossings so I need to think which shoes will be best for that. One pair of shoes has a tendency to hold a bit of water, so they'll be heavy as we emerge from the water and
head up hills. But another pair would cope this better but aren't quite as comfortable. And a third, brand new pair are a little untested...but promise to be ideal. I'll make a decision soon...
The other thing between now and the Six Foot Marathon is a race next Sunday, the King Island Imperial 20. This is a 32km race from coast-to-coast on the island, and is fantastic weekend away and great little mini-holiday. But it's only 6 days before the SFT so I'll need to either keep my ego in check and not run King Island too hard, or be very good at recovering during those 6 days!!! I think I'm fit enough to do both...I'll see how I'm feeling on King Island in deciding how hard to run. The SFT is the higher priority.
In the immediate short-term, the next week is an easy, recovery week. It will be nice to back off the number of runs, intensity and duration. Hopefully I'll be chomping at the bit when I hope on the plane to King
Island.
I'll post a race report from King Island - see here for my story from last year - and then the lead-up to SFT. Wish me good luck and fast running!!
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