Land of a Million Miles

We're here at Disney World, and my next 26.2 is less than 24 hours away now. Kelly and I arrived late Thursday night and we hit up a few of the Disney parks on Friday. Above is a picture of the castle at Magic Kingdom. Actually, if you hadn't figured it out, it's a flipped photo of the reflection of the castle in a pond.

It was a gorgeous day for our trips through Hollywood Studios (we still call it MGM), Magic Kingdom and Epcot. Not a cloud in the sky and probably in the 60s and 70s temp-wise all day. It was cool at points, but we're not about to complain when we're far removed from the below-freezing conditions in Toronto!

I'm looking forward to this marathon, but I'm not sure how I'll do. I'm not super confident like I was for the Las Vegas half, but I'm more prepared than I was for my first 26.2 in Chicago. The last six weeks of training haven't gone as well as I would've hoped, but that's due more to circumstances than me slacking off.

I still got the really important long runs in and maintained a solid mileage base weekly. I didn't do as much speed/tempo work as I should have in this last stretch, but there's no turning back now. At least Vegas showed me I have the ability to exceed my own expectations sometimes. Hopefully, this is going to be a similar situation.

I'm gunning for under 4 hours, which is a realistic goal. Ideally, I'd finish under 3:45. What I'm not going to do is say I'm setting out to come under 3:30 like I thought I could for Chicago -- not knowing what I was getting into. I have the ability -- in perfect conditions -- to run a 3:30, but I know a lot will have to go right to achieve that goal. So I'll be happy with anything under 4.

So, wish me luck, and if you want to track me during the race, which starts at roughly 6 am on Sunday, you can head to the Walt Disney World Marathon Web site and sign up in the Spectator resources section. It'll be interesting to see what kind of crowd shows up to cheer us on tomorrow, especially after experiencing the 1.5 million spectators that lined the streets in Chicago.

At least it should be good weather tomorrow. It's supposed to be in the 50s around 6 am and probably in the mid 60s by the time I finish. In Chicago, temps reached 85+ while I was still on the course -- not good. Over the past few weeks, I've been running in below-freezing temps in Toronto.

So, at least I won't have to dress up like this for the Disney run: