I am heading into Week 12 (of 26) for marathon training. The race still seems so far away but with the holidays quickly approaching and work and kids and their school and activities, I know the time will fly by.
Cooler weather has arrived so instead of the constant heat we had in September and most of October, we now have a much more bearable running temperature of the low 60’s. Funny thing….not even two years ago, running in 60 degree temperatures would have killed me, or at least I would have moaned and groaned the entire time. I used to STOP running during the Summer because of the HEAT. But, I made a goal of running through the past two summers and I have acclimated a bit, thus, 60 degrees feels frigid to me. OK, not really. 60 degrees just makes my runs more bearable. My favorite temps to run in are 45-50 degrees- true story.
My runs have ramped up in mileage and in the last 6 weeks, my long runs have been 8, 10, 7, 10, 11.6 and 9. It blows my mind that a 10 mile run is starting to feel *normal*. It seems so wrong to even type that! In fact, when I trained for the 8 half marathons I have already done, doing a 10 miler seemed next to impossible, or the very least, such a chore. This marathon training is completely blowing to pieces what I thought I could do and also, pushing me past my pre-conceived notion of what *normal* looks like for me.
And we’re barely getting started.
Today’s training run called for an easy run of 30-4o minutes. I did an easy run but I went a little further because the weather later this week doesn’t look very promising and I wanted to make sure to get in a four miler before my next long run (in addition to 2 shorter runs). I felt SO good during my run. How can this be? I ran 9 miles this weekend and that, too, felt pretty awesome and I had minimal soreness afterwards. It just boggles my mind…..but not really, as I know and understand that as long as I do the training leading up to race day, than I will be able to finish 26.2 miles on Feb. 15, 2015.
Do you have any big goals you are reaching for in the next 6 months?
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