10 days to go – starting to taper down training load. The last two weeks were definitely a departure from normal due to some travel, but I still managed to get my miles in. First I spent a week in a hotel in New Hampshire; luckily the days I was there were following a long run so I had a rest day, a strength day, and two light running days so I didn’t need to put much effort into plotting courses in unfamiliar territory. Last week I spent on vacation with my family in Florida. No such luck with training load that week, but it ended up being really nice; wake up, eat breakfast and have coffee on our patio, go run, then spend the rest of the day drinking on the beach. Even got a long run in! I opted to attempt my 20 miles on a treadmill so that I could 1) avoid the 80 deg heat, 80%+ humidity, and scorching sun, and 2) have easy access to water that I didn’t need to carry with me. I passed the time watching Blade, the first two hours flew by, and I only quit after 18 miles because I was worried I was going to cause a big toenail to fall off. It’s hard to describe, but when you go from normal (not feeling your toenails) to needing to constantly adjust foot positioning to stop feeling your toenail, its really disconcerting. I was still buoyed by my performance, managing to keep to the target 8:40 pace for the duration with just that minor discomfort, posting just under 42 miles for the week. I also went into that long run knowing that it would be easy to quit partway through; Since you’re not out on a loop or an out-and-back, you can just step off the treadmill and end it without a second thought.

Anyways, I’m back on home turf and locked in for the last set of workouts. PT has been great – my knees are finally back in full form, able to hit numbers on machines at the gym that I haven’t in months – and we’re just doing some maintenance to tackle minor aches as they pop up, and keeping stabilizing muscles tuned up. Now all I need is to kick this nagging cough and I might be able to challenge Garmin’s highly optimistic 3:21:30 prediction. I finally got Strava’s prediction down to 3:55:57 last week but the latest guess is closer to 4:01. I reckon I’ll be somewhere in between them, around 3:45 if I can keep up that 8:40 pace.

Turns out I won’t be escaping that last long run unscathed – my big toenail is starting to turn black. Hope that sucker can hang on for ten more days😬!