Dave - could you maybe aim 8:30 for the first half and then if you have some left pick up the pace for the back half?? That way you have a better shot of not falling apart in the first 14 due to pushing it?

That would probably be a smart approach. I'm not known for smart so I may ask the pace question in the Swamp and take the abuse. It will probably be very close to what you're saying though. 8:30 translates to a 3:42. If I can shave that down to 8's for the second half, I'd be around 3:36 and I'd be pleased with that.

Happy Birthday Erika ! Hope you had a great day. It was a good day for me too. Beat my previous best for a Half Marathon by 6 minutes today. Todays race 1:55:15. Re strained the calf muscle at mile 9, or I could have been a bit faster. Now I can't even walk on it, but it held up during the race, so all is good. Made my goal of Sub 2. Previous best was 2:01 so I wanted to beat that.

Happy Birthday Erika! ok, I'm not sure what the Swamp is... I feel like I should know this. Cash, congrats on the PR but I'm sorry to hear about your calf. will you go to a dr.? I went to mine on Friday for BOTH calves... both acting very tight. He gave me a hard time and did some stim and that laser thingie. I will go back tomorrow. I wrote in another post that I took my first ice bath last night. I was FREAKING out for the first 5 minutes and then everything was fine. And today my legs feel like a million bucks. So I probably will do it one more time before the marathon.

MTA: Swamp members sometimes get a well deserved bad rap because they tend to be very blunt and tell you just how it is without sugar coating.

Fixed that for you.

Good to hear that Shan. Its nice to see you running so much again. I'm feeling surprisingly good after the long run today. I'm leaning towards a very light taper. Will hopefully maintain mileage this week (over 40) with a long run next week of around 13. I did some forum searching and the consensus seemed to be for very little taper off of a modest base like I have. I've got to slow down though.

Dave, I was re-reading last week and read your posts where you asked about Nobby. We do not live that far apart, and I think he is mostly trying to help me out. We've tried before to meet each other one other time. There are nice races in his neighborhood often and a nice drive for me. With our different schedules and me feeling sick after the marathon it did not work to meet at TCM. He called me the evening before the marathon and we had a really nice talk. Amazing how well you sleep the night before a marathon when a professional running coach says you're ready. His post race advice was to keep my base up. I don't know if he'd take me on as one of his girls or not. I read once that Arthur Lydiard always had his runners come and ask, he never went to them. I have not asked for formal help yet. I think we will meet early December at a race, where I asked to treat him to lunch afterwards as there are nice little pizza shops in that neighborhood. I will have a girlfriend with to supervise. I let my friends down tonight, I am not doing the marathon on Sunday. Two weeks is not enough recovery time for me, and I want to run for many years. Going to spend lots of time in pool this week and easy running, decide new plan from there.