Marathon: The day is almost here.

In just under 8 days, it'll be time to throw all that training at the White Rock Marathon. Today, the schedule called for a 9-miler, the last run of over an hour that I am supposed to do. I warmed up the first three miles and did the last six at my marathon pace. It felt real easy. Very easy to do 6 of the last 9 miles in exactly 48 minutes. I feel very very confident I can hold this pace for an entire marathon, which would have me crossing the finish line in 3 hours, 30 minutes.
Next week will be about taking it easy and watching what I eat. Since I peaked out at a 55-mile week before I started tapering, I have put on about 4 pounds in the last two weeks. (Too much celebratory adult beverages, too much dairy - Pizza is going to kill me one day). Funny thing is I had all these aches and pains in my legs and feet before the taper, and now I'd say nothing hurts anymore. My left knee is still a little wonky, but its nothing I'm really worried about.
I know over the next 8 days I'll spend wayyyyyy too much time over analyzing my training and my past two marathon performances to see if I can glean something that may help me at White Rock. When I ran White Rock in 2005 and in 2007, I was not blogging, so I'll write race reports from both races (ugly, ugly) and share them with you guys this week.