Win it Wednesday: A Guessing Game

Hey friends! I'm off to the gym today to run three miles. Three. Spare me. It's barely worth the shower.

Anyhow, I've got to get it done because I'm heading downtown for meetings and a fun luncheon before coming back to get crazy with my marathon prep. There's packing and carpool coordination to be done, and the bitchiness is at an all-time high in my household.

Really, I don't. I'm just tapering.

In the meantime, I thought I'd host another "guess my time" contest. I did this for my last 70.3 triathlon and found it fun and motivating, so why mess with success? How it works: You guess my marathon finish time. The closest to my actual time gets a box of mystery goodies shipped to them by yours truly. It's a mystery because these aren't products anyone supplied me to giveaway - they're from my own personal stash of stuff. Here are the relevant details:

• My marathon PR is 4:30

  

  The bag o' goodies

• I set that PR more than a year and a half ago
• I've since added CrossFit
• I last trained by myself using Hal Higdon's plan
• I trained for this marathon using the FIRST method and did my long runs with a group. I followed this plan almost exactly.
• I ran my 20 miler and 18 miler at nearly 90 seconds faster per mile this cycle
• My current PRs are: 22:53 for a 5K (set two weeks ago), 49:06 for a 10K (ran in November)
• I've trained for a sub-four marathon
• My marathon plan is to start at a pace that would bring me in at 3:51
• I had a cold and called in sick to work Tuesday. I think rest/vitamins/water/Sudafed cured it, but it's hard to tell.

So tell it to me straight: What do you think my finishing time will be?