Last weeks run and plans for new week

I will post this email to the blog, but in the spirit of spontaneous e-mail chatter I will tell you about my previous week of running and the upcoming week. Last week I ran a total of 32 miles that included my log run of 16 miles on Sunday with a pace of about 11.5 minutes/mile. I know I ran 20 miles the week before, but my schedule gives me a week to recover after an especially long run. My partner and I used the pink mile markers from the week before to measure our pace. I plan on taking a before and after picture of our run to post on the blog. This week I'm supposed to run 37 miles that includes a long run of 22 miles. However, my partner and I will attempt to run 26 miles. Danny wants to know if he comes to Hickory to watch me run 26 miles if that counts as watching me run the marathon and exempts him from Dublin. I told him no because we are only running 26 miles not 26.1 miles. Psychologically I feel the need to run 26 miles before the real thing. It like Yogi Berra said about baseball - "it is 90% mental, the other half is physical". My goal is to finish so be prepared - it will take about 5 hours. That is one of the hardest parts of running the marathon, just staying on your feet and moving for 5 hours. I'll let you know how it goes next week.