Minneapolis Taste Buds

We had a great, relaxing trip up to Two Harbors on Friday. We checked in at the Americinn and made our way back down to Duluth to the DECC to get our race info. We got rock star parking, got our packets, had our spaghetti dinner, and were back at the hotel by 8 ish . We watched Karate Kid and Caddy Shack (what better motivators??) and were sleeping soundly by 11. We got up (who knew it was light out at 4:30 am?) and had our bagels and went out to catch the bus to the starting line. One very long porta pottie line and an orange Gu later and we found ourselves in our starting line spots - Mark in the 3:20 zone (cripes, he's fast), and I, realist that I am, parked myself in the 5:00 region. I'd been estimating a 4:30 - 5:00 finish time based on my long training runs and the RunnersWorld .com pace calculator. Starting line The weather at start time was fantastic - in the low 50's. I started out well and flew through the first 10K. Then all the advice from every marathon-fi

Just 2 more weeks of tapering to go. I had a really good 10-mile long-run along the river and the creek. A friend joined me for part of it and that made the run fly by. I felt great despite the humidity. My 20-miler last week, however, was not so pleasant. The first humid run of the season did not treat me well. The water belt was bugging me from the start as was an odd case of nausea . It took an embarrassing number of hours to finish, but I'm glad I didn't skip the last lap around Nokomis as I so desperately wanted to. It was a very off day, but I am still feeling confident about the marathon. It's amazing how many little details we're thinking about like where do you put all of your Gus and shot blocks? Which water stops do we stop at? Do we carry our own water so we can keep running if we don't feel like stopping at the water stops? Where the heck will our family find us? How long after Mark finishes will I finally make my way to the finish? How can I possibly