95%

Around here over the past week we went from pleasant autumn temperatures straight to the depths of mid-winter hell. Today I seriously considered not even running, even though it's only six days until the race. The wind was blowing nicely from the north and the thermometer read 20 degrees. The wind chill was 7. And it's only mid-November. I'm thinking the treadmill is going to get a good workout this year.

The plan for the last week of the taper called for a 6-mile easy run today. I completed 95% of that, or 5.7 miles. I was trying to be creative in running up and down the side streets on 96th and the part where it turned into Flintlock. And really, once I warmed up, which was right away because I started running at the end of the driveway, it wasn't horrible because I dressed in layers. The weirdest part of the run was when I put my iPod on shuffle and it played about three songs that I'd just added when I copied over my marathon playlist the other day, and then started playing The Bangles greatest hits album in sequence. I was okay with that. More than okay, as a matter of fact.

The other good news is that the GPS seems to be working again. I asked The Boy yesterday if his watch worked so I could use it as a timer for the race. He said it didn't, which caused me to take another look at the Garmin. I discovered one of the contacts had a piece that had broken off, so I bent it forward. That caused it to make contact with the other piece, and lo and behold it now works. My run today was at a 9:30 pace, the first time I've been able to track that in a long time. I'm hopeful it will work for the race on Sunday. Otherwise I'll be toting a dead weight on my wrist for many miles. I'm excited, though, because that means I was actually able to repair it for under fifteen bucks, as opposed to spending a few hundred dollars on a new accessory. Yeah me!