Looking forward to heading over to Pineland today for Day One of the two day festival. Kate and my good friend/pacer, Ryan, are running the 5K there today and it will be fun to cheer them on.
And tomorrow at 6am, I'll toe the line for the 50-mile race. Mindset is very relaxed. Maybe too much so. I think with road races I got used to the pressure of consistently being in that top 2-3% percentile. I don't mean that as a bragging point (that top one percent is often ridiculously faster), I only mention it because the fields tend to be much deeper in ultras. There's a much higher percentage of hardcore, very fit folks; pure and simple.
I'm still going to try for sub-8 hours. That translates to maintaining a 9:36/mile pace. The B-goal is to PR (break 8:23:37). With what is most assuredly going to be a very muddy run tomorrow, either of those will be tough. However, the mud will also make it a lot of fun. And plus, I'm essentially riding off of road marathon training, which should get the job done very well but is still not tailored specifically for a 50-miler on muddy trails. That being said, I still feel very good about running quite well tomorrow.
So, not feeling a ton of pressure. Don't get me wrong, I'm still focused and am going to run very hard tomorrow. I plan on hunting down whoever is in front of me later in the race...I just feel very relaxed about it all and plan on having fun.
Oh, the ribs. They still hurt, but they've improved. The pain is there but it's something that I've gotten used to and can largely ignore it, if that makes sense. I honestly don't think it'll be an issue tomorrow, thankfully.
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