I drove the Decker course today, and I can see why people have such a love/hate relationship with it. Its all hills. There are only a few steep ones, but the rest are still pretty decent. Should be fun. There were a few other cars on the road that seemed to be doing the same thing, which was entertaining.

I went out for a short 3 mile run today to see how things are going. I’ve been getting some mild cardio this week, but mainly I’ve been resting up. My ankle was a touch sore all over, but the achillies didn’t seem to be bothering me much; the soreness went away after the first mile or so. I averaged about a 9:00 and was breathing a little hard, but I put that down to zero warmup and no other running this week. I should still be fine for the 12.4 miles tomorrow.

Meghan and others who may be out there tomorrow morning - I’ll be wearing my dark green Racing For the Trail shirt, black shorts, and red shoes; bib number 268. Before the race I’ll have black warmup pants on and, if its cold enough, a blue/black jacket. I’ll be warming up near the start/finish line an hour before race time. Oh - and I’ll have my ForeRunner on, but that’s getting to be a pretty useless identifier at Austin distance races these days :)

My plan for this one? I’m not sure. I want to go out comfortably for the first mile or two, but not too slow - at least a 9:00 pace considering that I’ll have warmed up and the first couple of miles are more downhill than uphill. After that, the goal is to bring it up to about an 8:15-8:20 average mile - running fairly hard, but making allowances for the hills as they come.

I will make one promise. I am not going to significantly hurt myself if there’s anything that I can do about it. If that means walking backwards up the big hills, so be it. If that means walking it in because I twist something, so be it. I have to remind myself that these races - while fun - are not my end goal. Having said that, there is a nice five week gap between this race and the 30K down in Buda. I’m not going to purely play it safe - but I am going to be careful.

To everyone else who’s racing this weekend, good luck! To everyone else who’s running, I hope that you have a wonderful time. To those of you who are neither, I hope that you get better soon!

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