And now it's just over four weeks until Boston. Four weeks tomorrow is The Day. Which means that four weeks from now I'll be experiencing some mixture of anticipation, anxiety, dread and impatience. The usual stuff, magnified. I hope that once it starts I can relax and little and enjoy it. There is a woman at my gym who will be running Boston for the fourth time, and she uses the word "fun". That's where I'd like to be.

So at this point there's just one more week of training and then three weeks of tapering. Although the tapering part is relative. The weekend runs aren't as long but the weekdays don't change much. Still either a hills or speedwork day, an "easy" day, and a race pace day. There is always that little voice inside that doesn't want to taper, that doesn't believe I'll be able to run if I taper. It's hard to ignore but I follow the schedule and try to trust what's worked before.

Having said that, my training finishes off with the 30 km Around the Bay Road Race next weekend. It's beautifully timed re: Boston, at three weeks and one day before. 30 km is a nice distance to end training with. I am really hoping hard for a good run, although at the moment less than charmed by the weather forecast for that day: 0 C and light snow. Although if the snow is really light and the wind is not bad, that could actually be okay. Otherwise? Well, I did run in the snow this winter and did not enjoy it much. Granted, I was running on bumpy ice under snow at the same time and that was the toughest part.

Assuming the conditions are reasonable and I'm running well, conventional wisdom says to treat it like an LSD. Given that I've always had trouble sticking to LSD pace, combined with the crowd adrenaline and my mini-taper (trading Friday's race pace run for easy cross-training next week), that will be extremely difficult. However, if I'm in anything near the same shape as before Scotiabank (who can tell, for sure?) I can probably run it reasonably "hard" and still recover in time for Boston. My last pre-Scotiabank long run, three weeks before, was 38 km in about 3:25. And I recovered fine. So presumably I could recover from a faster 30 km.

Because of the timing of ATB, I did this training cycle's 38 km last weekend, and was fairly pleased with it. Total running time was about 3:32, not counting stops for bathroom breaks, shoe adjustments, traffic lights... So that's just about the right LSD pace. It's a little misleading, since some km were faster, and some (like a very slow one down in the valley that was enough to convince me the paths were not a good idea, or the ones where I was picking around ice) were slower. At the end I was very tired, and not at all sorry to stop. Could I have done 4 km more? I think so. Maybe not very fast, maybe with more walk breaks, but I think so. Something I have found, in running various planned distances, is that my body seems to often provide only the energy I need for that particular distance. Particularly if it's a long one. There have been lots of short runs, even some 24 km runs, where I could have gone longer with relatively little effort, but it seems that once I hit around 30 km and beyond, the body is primed for that distance and only reluctantly keeps pushing past it.

So naturally I hope this extends to Marathon Day and my body is primed for that 42.2 km as opposed to being ready to give up at the 30 km mark. Note to self: it's happened twice before, no reason it can't happen again.

A couple of weeks ago I did, rather regretfully, blow off my weekend long run. Can't remember the last time that happened. Primarily because once again we had a major storm. The snow started on Friday, so on Saturday morning DH and I shovelled out from under that. Then we shovelled again in the afternoon. And I went out one more time in the late afternoon, since we were going out for the evening and wanted to minimize what we'd have to deal with on Sunday. Most of the snow fell Saturday night, and Sunday morning we were out there for another three hours. It was actually sunny and fairly calm and part of me really wanted to run. The other part of me, by the time we finished, was tired, hungry and cold. Some snow had got into my boots and my toes were little popsicles. And I wimped out - could not bring myself to suit up for 18 km while feeling that way, but also didn't have enough time to eat, digest, run and still accomplish everything else that needed to be done that day. It bummed me out but there was some consolation in knowing that I hadn't exactly been sitting around doing nothing for two days. And presumably my base is deep enough that one missed 18 km run isn't a "make it or break it" event.

At the risk of complaining too much - but what better place to vent? - I am sick, sick, sick of winter. We haven't had a record snowfall in total but we certainly had a record for the month of February. And possibly record snow on the ground, or at least close. I expected to be running outside in the mornings by now, at least some of the time, but so far that hasn't happened. I'm still too worried about ice. And not thrilled with the temperatures, but those I could just decide to cope with if the pavement was bare. I have had a few slips, one fall, and seen another person fall while walking on sidewalk that looked bare. It just doesn't give me an easy mind about running on the same pavement, in the dark.

And it's not just the snow and ice that brings on this "sick, sick, sick" feeling, it's everything that goes along with it. The running mostly on concrete instead of asphalt, and consequently having to deal with more traffic lights, cross walks and pedestrians. The wind that is icy, even when it's not very strong. The dodging around old snowbanks (thankfully, that's pretty much past) and puddles. The not dodging puddles - nothing says "great run!" like a surprise icy water foot bath. The using up a forest's worth of tissues because even when the sun is warm, the respiratory tract knows it's the perfect temperature to run like a faucet - just love breaking my pace to blow my nose. Multiple times. The groping under a jacket, while wearing gloves, to get at the water bottle. The foggy lenses when running with a balaclava. Enough, already.

I hope that the saving grace behind this is that my treadmill running has improved stuff like endurance and hills. Certainly I have noticed that my speedwork on the treadmill has been getting faster. Will it translate to anything else? No way to tell until I try something else. And I still hate hills but did five of them today. One of them - #4 - was with DH and I was running his pace, could have been faster, so that inspired some confidence. Then I did a repeat on my own and didn't have quite so much energy. Still, it was near the end of my run and it was a good effort. Given that one long climb at ATB I had to force myself to do one more today!

Amazingly, my hips (knock wood) haven't had issues during this training period. My left hamstring, OTOH, has been feeling tight lately. I had an ART session last week and had some work done on it, which helped. The thing that seems to help most, interestingly enough, is a session on the recumbent bike. Because Friday was a stat holiday, I was able to follow my 15 km race pace run with a 20 minute easy cycle, and it did feel pretty good. I'm also using the foam roller and some icing. It's not something that hurts while running - in fact, it's more discomfort than hurt, period - and my ART person didn't say to stop running, so I haven't. It's also not an all-the-time thing. Still, I am being careful that it doesn't get worse.

A week from now ATB will be long over. I remember a year ago, being so nervous about the distance and so stunned to have had such a great time. Definitely not expecting that kind of time this year, but the distance is no longer so scary. And since I know lots more now about fuelling and hydration, the last few km might well be tough but I won't be doing them on empty.

Work and life are both insanely busy but at the very least I'll post a race report once the dust settles.