If you could find a Sweet Spot Upgrade Certificate (4 of them were mailed to 1K's a few months ago) you could qualify for a confirmed upgrade for all or part of your journey, although you'd need two of them to upgrade the return trip also.

How to get one? You could try the coupon connection here on FlyerTalk if you have anything to trade, or, another way is:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...&category=1310