Calm Before the Storm (of my first half-marathon)

So tomorrow morning will be my first half-marathon, the Kaiser Half-Marathon event in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. I've been running for almost one year now and have competed in over a dozen events, most of which were 5Ks. I signed up for this event about six weeks ago and only started training for it about five weeks ago. I know this generally isn't an ideal situation but I'm surprised at the progress I've made, with my long runs increasing by about two miles each week while also dropping down in pace. The honeymoon newbie period, I suppose.

I decided to use the FIRST training schedule from a book I found, Run Less Run Faster. I've always preferred high intensity workouts and liked that this training schedule pushed for such faster times than most any other. At the same time, the three day a week workout helps make my life a lot easier with daily life to care of in between workouts. I would highly recommend it and I've gotten very obvious results from it. To give you an idea, I used to consider my longruns 4 miles. With this compressed workout schedule I've pushed that to over 12 miles without injury or severe discomfort.

Thank you, literacy.

My only concern is my tapering schedule. With such a compressed workout schedule, I decided to do a 12.25-mile long run last 7 days ago, a shortened interval workout 2 days later (with incredibly poor times) and a 2-mile threshold run at under 5K pace 2 days after that. I've basically stopped running cold turkey for the past 3 days. This is considered a pretty abrupt taper and I'll know if it was a good idea or not tomorrow morning.

I've laid out all my clothes (which I've already tested out in that exact combination for my longruns) with the gel packs inserted into the pockets in the exact order I plan to take them. I prefer my bib on the shorts because I've found sweat to accumulate under it when pinned on the shirt. So I've pinned the bib exactly on the shorts where I want them, ready to go. I'll be running with my iPhone in my hand with earbuds on, despite originally planning to run with my GPS watch. The reason for this being that I've trained the majority of my runs this way and the other being that I've found my GPS watch to give different pacing than my iPhone. So between saving some weight and risking inappropriate race pacing, I've opted to go with the iPhone like the newb I am.

I don't really feel nervous (other than the obvious OCD paranoia demonstrated in the previous paragraph. To that I credit the very reason I chose to do a half-marathon when my body type and (lack of) training clearly dictates I should be a short distance runner. Namely, that I "shouldn't" be able to do it. I am not a long distance runner and to me, well, that just means I have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Quite frankly I'm excited for the race itself. No matter what happens, as long as I finish I'll be getting a personal record and it'll certainly be faster than the alternate-universe version of me who decided not to try, right?

This is my new wallpaper.