It took about a week for my back to heal, but my last couple of runs were really strong: I ran quickly and felt great. I felt absolutely certain that I would improve on my 10-minute mile average, a number I had never cracked before. (For a 10k, that pace would have me finishing in one hour.) Given my training pace, 50 minutes wasn’t feasible, but 55 certainly were.

That was the good news.

Then I got my race plan rundown from Sylvie. It included tips on eating (“You need to have breakfast about two and a half to three hours or so before the start, approximately 500-750 calories”), drinking, when and how to warm up, etc. I was psyched. And then I came to the “Course Notes” section.

This is a TOUGH course where it’s almost entirely downhill on the first half and almost entirely uphill on the second half. The uphill on the way back is almost continual and at some points is really quite steep (the section from when you start exiting the park to almost halfway onto Leslie is a bit of a grind).

A bit of a grind, says the three-time Ironman competitor. How fun.