I've had a very productive week of training, or at least a fairly consistent one. My times are down a little, and here and there, my joints hurt. That tends to go away after a few miles though, which is a good sign (if it keeps getting worse during a run, you really oughta stop). And my left arch hasn't hurt one bit all week. But I actually trained every single day, including speed training and a swim on Friday, which is more than I can say for at least a month.
Only downside to that is that it's possibly worn me out right before one of the few races where I really care about my numbers. I'm really hoping for 3:00, if not better, in hopes of securing a spot in Boston for next year. Boston has started a rolling registration, so that the bigger gap between your time and your Boston-qualifying cutoff time, the earlier you get to register, until it sells out. Apparently there's been an absurdly high number of Google search queries for "qualify for Boston Marathon" ever since the bombs went off, so one could assume that more people will try to sign up, requiring you to have a pretty good time in order to register before it sells out. Beating my qualifying time by only one minute in LA probably won't be good enough. Time will tell if I should've taken more than just one day off before the race.
So I rode the Google shuttle up to San Francisco after work on Friday and stayed with a friend for the weekend. I forgot how cold it always is there, only 40 miles away from where I live. Saturday in June and I had to walk around wearing long pants and a jacket, and somehow that still wasn't enough. It's summer. How do people live here? And they're willing to pay so much to do it! Give me the sunny South Bay any day of the year. Less people, too.
The expo was pretty cool, not as large as LA, well-organized, easy to navigate. Lots of free samples, but a little short on athletic gear and shoes. Not that I ever buy any at these events, but I still like to look at all the new stuff that's out there, get an idea what my next pair might be. There didn't even appear to be an official apparel sponsor; there were a few small kiosks of different companies, as opposed to a gigantic area dedicated to one company (Asics in LA, Adidas in Boston), and no others. Different way of doing things, I guess.
After breakfast, I didn't have a "real" meal all day, but snacked like crazy throughout, and basically felt full since the expo. I almost never have a "real" meal for dinner (and the one time I did recently, I had all kinds of stomach complications during the race), but this is a slightly different approach. Even without a full meal, it was kind of a lot of food. Let's see what happens.
Ever since some jerk decided to desecrate the most sacred temple of running, I've been pointing to the San Francisco Marathon as the race that I would run "For Boston." Two months in training, I'm ready.
For Boston, I will.
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