The hay's in the barn and I tore down the house

Well, I wanted an excrutiating mental-building run, and I got one.
The excellent steak last night had pepper on it; I scraped it off but ate enough of it to (combined with nerves) give me the shits this morning. This is excellent prep for the marathon. I had gut issues in my first marathon, and my third/last one too. It'll probably happen in Philly again too, to some degree.

So, I figured I'd show up tired for the run...being drained was an excellent bonus.

My legs were heavy, but I jogged about 2 miles to the Canal, and then 8.4-5 miles or whatever with Gazelles #1 and #2. We did one loops, from Laurier to the locks back to Laurier. Then it came to the 2nd loop. This was supposed to be at marathon pace. I had given up on this earlier, and promised myself that, if I did the 2nd loop, I wouldn't have to run it any faster. However, when we came to it, Gazelle #1 pulled ahead and I couldn't bear the thought that I would still be running/suffering while he was done, so it was time to end it.

Marathon pace, 8:23ish a mile, continues to elude me. It's not one of my gears. We ran the first loop at about 9:00/mile, and the 2nd at about 8:00. I still don't know how I did it. 9:00/mile was bad enough. My legs were stiff, my stomach sore. I was also little low on sleep...these last couple of weeks have been somewhat insomniatic, so what happens is that I wake up with weird snippets of tunes in my head, and these loop over and over. I had some sort of 50's bass line going through my head this morning. I guess it helped me get into a rhythm, though, and I tried to keep things light and lazy and just follow Gazelle #1.

I don't know how long the 2nd loop took...not long, though! altogether, I ran about 30K in about 2:42:XX.

Sure am beat now! We went to the spa afterwards. :)