Race day is almost here

This morning, I went for my last run before the Baltimore Marathon on Saturday.  It was a solo run because it was raining and I didn’t want to take Zain out in this weather.  I couldn’t decide between running 3 or 4 miles so I sort of split the difference and ran 3.6.

At the beginning, the rain was very light and felt great for running.  Halfway through my run, it turned into a downpour.  I was completely drenched.  There is no doubt in my mind that I looked like a crazy person to the morning rush hour traffic that passed me by.  I love running in the rain and this felt like the perfect last run to have before the marathon.

I have so many emotions right now about the marathon – I’m nervous, excited, anxious.  I don’t have a set time goal in mind, but I do want my time to be better than my first marathon which was 4:57.  I don’t really care if it’s a minute faster or 30 minutes faster, I just want to see an improvement.

I know from running the Baltimore Half Marathon in 2006 that the race draws an insane amount of spectators.  I remember people cheering us on throughout the whole 13.1 miles.  I distinctly remember one guy yelling at me while I took a walking break that “if your feet get tired, then run on your toes!” It was funny and ironic since I did have horrible pain in my feet back then.

I do feel nervous about the race and I keep reminding myself that I have been training for this for months and I know I can do it.  I ran 20 miles pushing Zain in the jogging stroller, I should be able to handle 26.2 without anything to push (except hubby, I know when he gets tired I may need to give him a little nudge).

The Baltimore Marathon is known for it’s mean hills, but apparently there are other things we runners need to be on the look out for.  The runner handbook warns to watch out for wild animals while we run through the zoo.  I was under the impression that the wild animals were kept in cages so let’s hope none of them have any escape plans in place on Saturday! It just so happens that hubby, Zain and I went to the Maryland Zoo on Monday.  I’m glad we already got a chance to see some of the animals, otherwise, I can assure you I would want to stop to take pictures of them and hubby would not be pleased with me .

Depending on how I’m feeling as we go through the zoo, I may need to hop on one of those guys to get me to the finish line.

What do you think? Elephant?

Cougar?

Leopard? No, he’s too lazy sleeping in his tree.

Or maybe a zebra!

Zain says to go for the giraffe.

The next post you see from me will be after the marathon.  Happy running and good luck to those racing this weekend!