I'm often humored by the preponderence of excuses you will hear runners make before their races. One weekend before a HM in Korea, there were 4 of us from the club at the start line...
Runner 1: "I've already run 55 miles this week."
Runner 2: " I hurt my knee playing soccer."
Runner 3: " I ate like a pig on my vacation last week in the USA and gained big weight."
Runner 4: (that's me) "I'm not in race shape" (because Runner 2--Korean-- did not understand English well enough to sign me for the 10K as asked, and I'd only run over 5 miles once in two months).
Sure enough, Runner 1 was the only one who ran well; non-tapering is NOT an excuse.

Last year, I ran a Half-Marathon after running only around 15 miles a week for 10 weeks due to a back injury that totally disabled me. I ran 10 minutes slower than I'd normally expect, but was happy to be able to run at all.

I hope this year I won't have any excuses except the same ones that effect everyone, like bad weather.

Today, I ran 8.5 miles outside without as much of the soreness I've talked about in earlier posts and kept a sub 8:00 pace after the first mile without any struggle. Just a little soreness. No excuses necessary...