Prepping for a personal worse...

Firstly, thank you all for the well wishes. I'm in phili waiting for my next flight to Boston. Didn't get much sleep last night as I had a 6:45 flight this morning. There's a guy next to me wearing a 2003 Boston shirt. I wonder how many people on this flight are doing the marathon. So I'll probably post a few more times before the race as this I'd all fairly new to me. I don't think I'll be blogging during the race but I will be twittering the odd pic or statement so you can keep track of that by following my twitter account in the sidebar.

So prior to each marathon, I usually set some goals for the race. This race is a bit different since this is the first time I'm not going in with a certain agressive time goal in mind. So my goals for Boston are as follows:

1) to run a personal worse time. My slowest marathon to date is 4:10 and come hell or high water I will be slower than that. This dates back to a time when a bq was just a far off goal. I would tell anyone who would listsen that my goal was always to qualify. It was about the journey to get there that was important and not so much the final destination. So in keeping with that, slower than 4:10 is my goal.

2) run a negative split. Though this might contradict goal number 1, it's entirely possible to do both. In the 8 marathons I've done, I've never run a negative split so I think now would be the perfect opportunity to do so. Also considering that Boston is known to be difficult to run a negative split on, it would be a noteworthy accomplishment, even if it might be a bit artificial in nature.

3) get a picture of myself in front of every mile marker. I saw a guy do this in my first marathon and I thought it was a great way to memorialize the race. This has always been something that I wanted to do and here is my chance.

So in order to accomplish all of the above I've decided to start at the very back of the first wave. I'm in corral 5, but I'll be moving to coral 13. I'm hoping to be the last person in the first wave to cross the start line. This will give me about a 10 to 15 minute head start on those in wave 2, but means I won't be in anyones way in the first wave.

For those interested in tracking me, I'm bib 5505. Next post will be from Boston!