Discussion: "The fourth race is a half mar...

"The fourth race is a half marathon that comes three weeks before Pensacola. I'll run that one as a real race to get a measure on my fitness."

I guess three weeks is still enough time to squeeze in a couple of extra speedwork sessions and tempo runs or whatever you felt might help if there was a problem, but if the fitness falls short, do you want feel like your playing catchup? Of course, if your fitness checks out and i suspect that would be the case, then its probably pretty good timing.

There's not much you can do to change fitness in anything less than 12 weeks. However, knowing your fitness is extremely important so you can set the right pace in the early going. Even being off by as little as 10 seconds per mile can have disasterous consequences in the final 10K.