At long last, my friends, it's showtime. That far off date that was once a distant speck on the calendric horizon is now at hand. After all your painstaking work and discipline, this is your week to shine, your opportunity to do something that will make everyone around you proud. By this Thursday at approximately 1:00 PM , you will be positively glowing with justifiable pride. Note that you may finish well before then but it will probably take that long until you start glowing because you'll probably be a bit pale until then. When you cross that finish line outside the Leonardo Hotel, regardless of your finishing time, you will be a hero. You will have had the courage and tenacity to undertake a journey that less than 1/2 of 1% of people ever take in a lifetime. More than you know, you will be a source of inspiration to your friends and neighbors because you will have gone beyond what man was comfortably designed to do. If you can conquer this, you can redefine the scope of the possible in any other arena of your life.

As wonderful as it is to run with such an accomplished group, there is also undeniably a downside. We inevitably become jaded by our intense desire to go faster and continuously improve. In the process, we sometimes lose sight of what an immense accomplishment merely running and finishing a marathon, regardless of our finishing time, truly is. I recall that when I was 14, I happened to sit next to a man on a plane who had run the New York City Marathon earlier that day. I thought the guy was Superman. "You mean you just ran 26.2 miles", I asked him in disbelief. It never ocurred to me to ask his time. It didn't matter. Here was a real live hero sitting right next to me. Since my first marathon 9 years ago, I have trained tenaciously in order to slice a few minutes or seconds off the time it takes me to cover the absurd distance of 42.2 kilometers. I have not always met my optimal goals but I have never allowed myself to get depressed about it. If you allow yourself to fall into the trap of being a Type A personality and fail to participate merely because you are no longer setting PR's, you undermine your own impressive achievements as well as those of your co-runners. Even worse, you sap running of its inherent joy and simplicity. Savor your fitness and revel in the fact that you are one of the rare few who, despite the unyielding demands of a busy life, still get to achieve the improbable.

Our primary focus for the next five days is to stay healthy, loose and positive. The small amount of running that we will be doing is secondary to the psychological work you will be doing, preparing yourself to succeed spectacularly in an event that you are eminently well-prepared for.

Here's what this weeks holds in store for us:

Marathon Week (1/7-1/13) plan
10k migdal hamayim 10
rest
10k (4k at marathon pace) 10
5k easy 6
rest
THE BIG DAY (42.2) 42.2
rest