Sunday, April 12, 2009

THE COUNT DOWN BEGINS

First off, Happy Easter! He is risen indeed!
After gorging myself with sweets from my lovely basket courtesy of the Big Hopper, or E.B., or just my wonderful husband, I am posting my final blog before the big day.

My Bib # is 13129. There are 2 start times, I am in the first wave of runners to begin at 10 am Boston time on Monday, April 2oth. (Patriots Day)

Here are some links in case you are interested!

My new obsession, the Boston weather report. It changes drastically every single day!
Boston Weather

Boston Race Facts


Street and elevation map of the course Yikes!

AT&T Athlete Alert You can sign up to track me while I run!

Boston Marathon History


Everything Boston from Runner's World. Great interview with one of my favorite female runners Kara Goucher. Very inspiring!
Runners World Boston

This is what I will be wearing for the marathon. My new 'fierce' Nike Sports Top, courtesy of Runner's Den, my new favorite place. Yes, that is 'the' top I dragged Matt all over Phoenix to find. In all fairness, I did tell him we should try Runner's Den first. Poor guy! I also got a light green top. I think I will save it for the San Diego Marathon on 5/31. It is not nearly as fierce as this bad boy!
My beloved race ready shorts, and my new organic Moeben arm sleeves


You can also see my Boston celebration jacket. I was going to pose in it for a picture but thought that might be testing luck. I will have plenty of pictures in it with all my glory starting Saturday morning at Phoenix airport!


On to my last 'long' run of 12 miles yesterday. It started POURING at mile 4. So Matt and I had an interesting adventure. People in their nice, dry cars gave us some very funny looks. They must have thought we were nuts! Anyways, we made it back home, and I killed the run! 12 miles at 7:13 average pace. I felt great, not even winded. Although we were soaked, we had a really good time sloshing through puddles! It was a good training run as it may very well be raining in Boston. (In fact, the weather forecast right now says it will be!)
Poor Matt, soaked after the run. Look at those clouds!

I am really hoping for no rain at Boston, look at what it did to my hair! Yikes! :)
As you can see, I was trying out my new 'fierce' top.


I am getting nervous since all of my training runs have gone pretty well. Usually you want one bad long run so that you get the bad luck out before race day! I did have a really bad 17 a few weeks ago, so I think I will count that! Overall I feel ready. I am nervous for the hills, but I think I did all I could to prepare. I hill-trained hard once a week, and tried to do my long runs in hilly parts of town, so I hope that helped! There are horror stories from those Newton Hills in Boston.
I spent 18 weeks training just for Boston so I hope it pays off. I feel good, I just need to wash my hands a ton and take lots of vitamins this week! Thursday I will start carb-loading. Nothing like feeling fat and bloated before a race. So worth it though, as you are avoiding the 'wall' at mile 20!
I am just praying for a good race. I would LOVE a PR, and I think it is possible, but you never know until you meet the hills and ANYTHING can happen on race day, so I am TRYING not to psych myself out!

Thank you again for all of your well-wishes and support. I still can't believe that I am running Boston.
I will post again in 2 weeks with pics and results from the race!

Runningly yours,
Ariana

4 comments:

Loeffler Family said...

Good Luck Ariana!! You are going to do great in Boston!!! Our little family will be cheering you on from California!!!

Brandon said...

Sounds like you are going to have an awesome pace for the race!! you are blazing on your training runs! good luck!! tell Matt he looks ridiculous in that hat... =)

Kay said...

I couldn't be there in person to cheer you on, had to work, but congrats on the finish! It's been raining here all day, glad it held off until today :)

Moe Leah and Khalina said...

I heard you did GREAT! We're all so proud of you. We want to be there when you run San Diego!