Marathon-4: Not much to report really

Following on with yesterday's theme of mind-numbing details of my life, here's today's report:

1. Dehydrated (too lazy to get off ass to go downstairs to fill glass)
2. Ate poorly (see above)
   
3. Sore back (two advil last approximately four hours)
4. Spent the entire morning in one of the silliest meetings I've ever attended and emergency bat signal failed to bring immediate rescue or a merciful end to my misery. #3 and uncomfortable chairs didn't help.
5. Am off coffee for the week, which made #4 much harder to bear.
6. Forgot snacks, which made #4 much harder to bear.
   
7. Spent the afternoon thinking really really really hard about how to present a roadmap for web re-development in a visual way and I think I've come up with some interesting ideas. Let's hope it's not like one of those brilliant ideas that comes to you at 2 am in the morning and really isn't. Brilliant that is.

Yesterday I printed out the elevation profile for the race. I'm pretty much ignoring the mile long hill at mile 25 - I'll get up that through sheer strength of will (if I have any left) and won't really care whether I'm jogging, striding or shuffling. Some of the other hills (and there are numerous) look short and steep, which will send the HR soaring, so I'll have to monitor that and make sure that it recovers on the downhills or that I walk when it gets too high for too long. No pride - this is a simulation exercise only. I'm not "racing" the marathon - only surviving it and learning from it.

My coach said that to simulate Placid as much as possible, I should try and get to and stay in Z3 for as much as possible. I don't know if I'll have the mental strength to do that since my mind has always been my weakest muscle and although I've learned to just keep on running for miles and miles on end, I've done it at Z2 which is significantly easier and less painful. We'll see. I imagine there will be a lot of deals with the devil out on that course on Sunday.