1/2 Marathon

The days are ticking away, and I need to get moving along on my training. Many of you probably know that I am going to be attempting to run the Twin Cities Marathon on October 5th. I have said it before and I will say it again. This is very close to the dumbest thing I have ever done. The training is such a waste of time and I really don't think it is all that good for your body. How has my training been going? Just O.K. in my opinion. Last weekend I ran 17.4 miles. I have a 5.8 mile loop that I do. My pace for the first two loops was right on if I want to finish in under 4 hours, right around 52 minutes. But the last loop was around 57 minutes. But I would like to stress that in my training, I do take walk breaks. Something that is highly stressed to do in the book I have read on marathon running. For the entire run last weekend, I was running 6 minutes then I would walk 1. Training this way is suppose to help with recovery time and reduce the chance of injuries. Obviously when it is the real race, I won't be doing quite as many walking breaks, but I do plan on doing a couple of them. One of the milestones I set for myself in the marathon training was to run another 1/2 marathon. This is the purpose of this post. I am going to be running the Lake Country 1/2 Marathon this coming Saturday.
If you would like to come and cheer me on, you can see by the above map that the race is basically around Lac La Belle. The race starts at 7:00. My goal is to be crossing the finish line somewhere between 8:45 and definitely before 9:00. As far as I know there aren't any train crossing on this race course, so I shouldn't have any excuses. I hope to see some of you there.