T-minus 24 days till race day, and counting

Despite all my bluster and bravado yesterday about starting to prepare for race day now that I'm signed up, in the end last night's run was scuttled due to bad weather. Such are the trials and tribulations of winter training: there will be days where the sun is shining, the snow freshly fallen and you're glad to be outside enjoying it. Other days, such as last night, the roads are simply just too treacherous to brave; especially at night, where drivers may not see runners as easily, and need more time to stop safely.

So I called an audible last night (as did several of my friends) and opted to take the night off from running.

This close to race day, the training gets interesting. On the one hand, if it's your first time ever training for the distance, this is the point at which you're increasing distances for the first time. It's also close to the point at which you start getting paranoid about things like injuries or illness - one little slip, or a week or more of illness, might scuttle things on race day.

On the other hand, it's at this point that the amount of work you can put into your training starts becoming more and more limited. In a couple of weeks, you will reach the point at which there is nothing more you can do to prepare for race day.

So this time in training is a delicate balance between training enough and avoiding over-training. Which means that even if I missed tonight's run, I'm confident that things will still be ok on race day. Stay safe and warm out there, fellow runners!

~ HRG