Last medium run before Chicago

ORN: 10 miles, 1.3 degrees, 8 min/mile or faster. Total miles for "100 mile club" - 57.

I'm still on the fence between signing up for the 3:30 and 3:40 pace groups. Today's run offered little edification. The way I see it, I have these factors as pros & cons for being actually able to run a whole 26.2 miles at the 8 min/mile that I would need for a 3:30.

Pros

• Crowd energy - it just keeps me up and moving, which would be a big help in the latter stages of the race
• Gu & Gatorade - today's run was only on water. I did it, and even had a nice sprint at the end, though it was only 38.4% of the actual distance
• Weather - the Y is hot. Outside is not hot. Hot is bad. Not hot is good. I'd much rather run in 50 degree weather than 74 degree weather.
• Improvement - I've been looking over a lot of the posts I made before my last marathon. I'm running noticeably faster, and at a higher incline. This does boost my confidence somewhat.

Cons

• 3:30 is fast. Pushing it fast. 18 minutes of my PR fast. That might be too much of a bite to take at once time, especially considering that I. . .
  
• Missed some long runs - I missed a long run for a family emergency, one or two for sickness, cut one short due to injury, cut one short to run a fast (1:43) half-marathon, etc. I just don't feel as trained as I did last time.
• Crowds - 40,000 people is a lot of people. Even if I don't have to weave through them all (and I don't), it still means that I have miles of "Get out of my way" thoughts running through my head and interrupting my rythym.
• No music - *sniff* I'll have to run without my mp3 player. No "Superman" theme song, no Weird Al, 80's rock, Spamalot, Disney, ska, etc. I can do it, as I generally ran most of my long runs sans music, but good tunes really help move the feet along about mile 20.

I've still got a couple days to decide. The rest of my runs are going to be short, no incline, and slower. I'll probably bike a bit too, but easy and slow - no sense working hard before the 22nd, right?