Notes
6 miles at goal marathon pace with 1 mile push. AQI was better than the last couple of days but still unhealthy at 96. I went into this with a positive attitude, regardless of where I was going to end up, I was feeling good about how my quad has been healing and looked forward to testing the effort level of marathon pace. Richey said to run between 5:05 and 5:10, which is probably more aggressive than I anticipate going next weekend but thought I'd give it a try. Let Aidan, Syd and Parker go and ended up running with Charlie for a while. We were on the faster end for the first two miles, and I wasn't exactly floating, but it felt fine, however, once we came back up Gunbarrel I could feel the smoke hitting me in the chest. I wasn't gasping but my breathing wasn't relaxed either. I pulled away from Charlie before the 4th mile as I tried to keep it going but felt like I was running up against a breathing barrier and had a rough 5th mile. The slight inclines were killing me and I was losing power in my stride. I didn't panic, and I tried to keep the momentum going the best I could since it felt like I wasn't maxed out; the decay was slow. Rallied slightly on 6th but I knew the push was going to be a bastard. Back up Gunbarrel for most of it and tried to get a little pace back in the last 300m but the damage was done. It wasn't pretty but I was going to get it done to the best of my ability. Everyone struggled with the poor air quality this morning which makes me feel a little better about my performance. I don't know how Ottawa will go, but I'm feeling like a more conservative start and not burying myself early will be critical to walking away with a personal win. I'm thinking an "A" goal will be to PR, "B" goal is to negative split the halves, and "C" goal will be to finish without tearing my quad. These may be tuned closer to race day, but that's how I'm feeling at the moment.