19 Weeks to Marathon

Monday, May 18th 2009: 5 miles in 49 minutes. I ran in the morning before work which is becoming the only option because it has been ghastly hot. I still feel groggy that early and my body frequently reminds me that I should be in bed.


Tuesday, May 19th 2009: 30 minutes on exercise bike. This is mindless exercise as long as there is a basketball game on.

Wednesday, May 20th 2009: 4 miles in 35 minutes. I ran later in the day which was utterly miserable. I also tried to run too fast for my britches which encouraged a strong nausea sensation.

Thursday, May 21st 2009: 3 miles at track + 17 mile bike ride. I went on a bike ride with Tom Thursday night. It was long and challenging and exhausting. But....I didn't feel sore and beat up like I do after running. That was nice.

Friday, May 22nd 2009: Rest.

Saturday, May 23rd 2009: 10 miles in 1 hour 55 minutes. Me and Running are friends again after last week's brutality. The run today went great. Mel and I left at 5:30am and tried an experiment. We went slower, and stopped every mile to stretch and walk for 1 minute, whether we felt like it or not.

This worked perfectly. I wasn't hurting and exhausted and was able to get into the zone where I'm thinking about other things besides assessing which part of my body hurts the most. I planned to just run 9 miles but felt so good at that point that I ran one more.

I'm really going to work on slowing down for my long runs and doing more stretching during the run. I think this will help reduce the possibility of wanting to stop, curl up in fetal position, and spend the rest of the night sleeping on the side of the road.