Before I babble on about race stuff, I have to mention what a fabulous time Gabe had at his first T-Ball practice this morning! He LOVED it!!! He was his usual distractable self when they were fielding balls, but he was definitely in good company. Getting a group of 5-year-old boys to stand at attention for more than 30 seconds is quite a feat. The coaches were all great, though, and made sure that the focus was on having fun.
Gabe did ok with fielding some ground balls and throwing, and did really well when they took turns batting. He's been doing great with his plastic T-ball set at home, but I wasn't sure how well he'd do with a real bat, but he did just fine. And although he's right-handed, he bats lefty, which I found interesting.
I feel like the crappiest parent ever, though, because it wasn't until about 20 minutes before practice started that I realized we hadn't bought the poor kid a glove! So we ran to the store on our way to the ball field and picked up a baseball glove for him. Not sure how I forgot about that, but I'm just glad the store was open and had plenty of gloves.
Dante did well, too, and didn't seem jealous at all. He was pretty content to just hang out with me and Scott in the bleachers, and for a short while we took him over to the playground that's very conveniently located right next to the ball fields. So it all went very well, and I'm already looking forward to taking him again next Saturday : )
This afternoon Gabe and I went up to Providence to pick up my race packet. I wanted to save myself the hassle of having to get it tomorrow morning, and I'm glad I did. I'll have time tonight to get my timing chip attached, and won't have to stand in line for anything tomorrow - except for the porta-potties, of course.....
I'm not feeling terribly nervous right now, but I know the nerves will kick in tomorrow morning.
Weather forecast is calling for low 50s and cloudy, with the chance of an isolated shower - pretty good, I think, as long as the isolated shower doesn't turn into downpours.
The course looks less hilly than last year, but still has some sizable hills, particularly at mile 6 and 10. But I've been running a lot of hills lately, so I'm not feeling like that's going to cause me too many problems.
My goal is to finish in 1:48. It's an aggressive goal - it will require me to run at an 8:15 pace. I really feel like I can do it, though. And I didn't just pull that number out of thin air - it's based on the good old MacMillan calculator.
I'll be disappointed if I don't meet that goal, of course, but anything under 1:53 will be a PR, so I've got a good 5 minutes of wiggle room to at least finish with a new half-marathon PR, which would be pretty awesome.
My only real strategy is going to be to maintain a consistent pace. I know if I go out too fast, I'm going to lose valuable seconds in the second half of the race, and I don't want that to happen. I think if I can keep my pace as consistent as possible, I really have a good shot at the ultimate goal.
The retirement mentioned in the title refers to my 'lucky hat.' I bought a hat last summer that I have worn at almost every race I've run in since then, and every race I've worn that hat to has been a great race - including PRs, age-group awards, and my first triathlon and full marathon.
In fact, the one race at which I didn't wear the hat - the Jingle Bell 5K on the Beach in December - was the crappiest race I had all year. So you can see why it's been deemed lucky.
But, as you might imagine, wearing it for all my training runs and all those races has really taken its toll, and the lucky hat is looking unbelievably dingy and disgusting. So tomorrow will be its last run. Hopefully it'll go out on a high note : )
Whatever happens, in the end, I'm just really looking forward to getting out there and running 13.1 miles!!!!!!
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