From NR: I have a marathon in 4 days!

Okay! Updated news is that I managed to get Friday and Saturday off with some help. Huzzah! So I'll be heading down to Ashland for packet pickup and spaghetti feed sometime Friday afternoon and racing on Saturday.

I'm feeling sort of detached from this one. Maybe because the decision was so late, maybe because I've got a lot going on outside of running? I don't know but I haven't even bought my gels yet and haven't thought about the course all that much. I'm tapering but it feels weird to not have to go out and run and I'm thinking I'm maybe tapering too much.

Anyway, this wasn't meant to be such a dejected sounding post! I'm ridiculous excited about Wild Duluth (soon I can start haunting the 10 day forecast!), which might be why I'm still sort of realizing that "oh yeah! I have another big race this weekend!" I'm feeling a little unprepared but I think that's because my long miles have mostly been done differently then I'm used to. My two 20 miles runs were vastly different - one had a 10K race in the beginning with added mileage around it and another turned into a 27 mile weekend with two longer back to back trail runs instead of one long run. I know there are a lot of people who do long runs that way instead and it works just fine, it just feels super strange.

So! Weather looks amazing for this weekend! Right now it's a high of 56 or so with lows from the night before in the high 40s. Beautiful! No need for me to worry about hypothermia this year . . . Though, rest assured that I'll be taking one of everything that I might want to race in just in case. I'm ready for a beautiful day of running, though.

I had a gorgeous run the other weekend, too! Kyle and I went camping at McCarthy Beach State Park. Now, I definitely wouldn't go there during the summer - there are too many campsites and too close together. But, in late September? Wonderful! We were one of six taken campsites in the whole park. So it's right on a couple of lakes and it was exactly 6 miles from our campsite, around the main lake. Half on tar, half on these beautiful rough gravel roads. So I did a couple laps of the lake and we hiked a ton of the trails.

Now, while I'm running my eighth marathon on Saturday (third for the year!), I have an online acquaintance (well, someone who's blog I follow and comment on) who will be racing the Ironman Championships in Hawaii. We have similar marathon goal times only her marathon comes after a 2.4 mile swim and a 112 mile bike! So I shall try to channel some of her amazingness on Saturday! If you want to follow her blog of awesome, she can be found at Go Sonja.

That's all for now! We're halfway through the NMTC trail series - the last Wednesday night is tomorrow and then we switch to Sunday afternoons. I haven't decided how I'm racing tomorrow, yet. I'm in the women's lead so far (super exciting!), so I have to race some to keep my lead but I don't want to go super hard . . . We'll see how it turns out and how I'm feeling, I guess. Luckily, the week between Whistlestop and Wild Duluth is sort of a rest week. Of course, the hardest course of the series is the day after Wild Duluth. Luckily, we get to drop our lowest score of the series!