B-day minus six

Less than one week to go before my big comeback run. Not to put any pressure on it or anything.

Yesterday's 9.32 miles was my last longish run. This morning I intended to go for six miles, but circumstances conspired so that I ended up doing about 6.5, although I shut off the Garmin at 6.36, which was where I was when the timer clicked over to 60 minutes. I jogged home around the rest of the block, timer off because I didn't want to wreck my average pace.

My quads were giving me a bit of grief after yesterday's downhills. Not crippling or anything, but I certainly could feel the muscles tightening up. Still can, this afternoon.

However, I was pretty happy with my progressively negative splits....

1 - 9:45
2 - .55 miles at 9:44 pace (5:19)
3 - 9:33
4 - 9:25
5 - 9:18
6 - 9:08
7 - .81 miles at 9:14 pace (7:31)

The question still remains, however. Is this the best I can do, and thus a predictor of my performance to come on Sunday? Or, as in the past, will the race-day adrenaline kick in and allow me to shave a minute or so off my average pace, and thereby match or beat last year's performance? A month ago I would have said, not likely. But then a month ago I would not have believed I would do a six to eight mile training run at an average pace of less than 9:30 (9:26 this morning).

I checked the weekend weather forecast for Sunday and so far it appears promising—high around 60 and, hurrah, mostly cloudy. (Ideal or good running conditions are often just not the same as what "regular people" would like for their weekends.) The only thing better, of course, would be another ten degrees cooler!