Sounds of Music

I'm off to Nashville, Tenn., this weekend for the Country Music Marathon. Although I have one marathon under my belt already, I'm experiencing many of the same emotions that I felt leading up to my first one -- excitement, anticipation, anxeity, nervousness.

Something I've learned in the aftermath of my first marathon and in training for this one is that 26.2 miles is a long way, and you've got to respect the marathon distance. If you don't, it will bite you hard. So I guess if I wasn't excited, anxious or even a tad nervous, something would be wrong.

My training leading up to this weekend has been outstanding. I logged my last pre-marathon run this morning -- 2 miles at an easy pace on the indoor track. On the whole, my training times have been much better than my corresponding runs when training for the Walt Disney World Marathon back in January. For example, in comparing the longest runs of my two training periods, I ran 22 miles about five minutes faster than I ran just 20 miles in just a few weeks ago.

• Dec. 17, 2005: 20 miles in 3:49:51 (11m 29s/mile)
• April 8, 2006: 22 miles in 3:44:06 (10m 11s/mile)

Plus, I paid much better attention to my diet this time, and, as a result, I'm about 25 pounds lighter than I was in advance of the Disney marathon. Two days before the Disney marathon, I weighted 184.8. Today, two days before the Country Music Marathon, I weighed 160.2, an overall loss of 24.6 pounds.

Given my faster training times and lighter weight, I'm hoping to shave some considerable time off my finishing time from January. At Disney, I finished in 4 hours, 44 minutes and 38 seconds. My goal going in was to finish in under 5 hours. Going into Saturday, my goal is to finish in under 4 hours, 30 minutes. But of course, lots can happen over the course of 26.2 miles.