1 day, 14 hours, 24 minutes, 12 seconds

So it says on the banner when I navigated to the Mississauga Marathon main page.

I've done Mississauga 3 times. I ran the inaugural run, doing the half marathon, finishing in 86th place of 1907 participants. If memory serves me right (and that would be rare), I believe the 10k didn't finish at the same location the half and full did in the first year. So that puts me as one of the first hundred people to ever cross that finish line.

The second run was the full in 2005, and got me a ticket to Boston. I last ran it in 2007, doing the half and a reasonable 1:33ish finish. This year I'm not so sure what to expect. My longs are in the 14-16 mile category and run nearly every week, I've been trying to sustain that all important mid week mid long. Bigger weeks as of late (50s and 60s) have me tired on my longs, but the pace hasn't reflected it as I've been able to run 16 in the mid 8's, even though I've been trying to keep them easy. My 5k race on Wednesday (or, more accurately, my 4.7k race) was run at about a 6:40/mile pace, so that shows some pace improvement as spring moves on. It's not a matter of getting faster, it's a matter of being able to hold the pace that seems to improve when the miles get up there.

I skip this race every other year mainly due to the timing. It falls on Mother's day, and I can't exactly make that day for me every year for obvious reasons. It would be nice if they could move it by a weekend, then I could make it my late spring staple. Or maybe I could have Mother's day moved?

Anyway, for the others that are making the trek to Miserysauga on Saturday and Sunday, good luck to all!