With the Baltimore Marathon behind me now, its time to focus on the Philly Marathon.. my next stretch of training hasn’t started out so great for two reasons. First, the weather in the northeast is COLD, I mean COLD for October. The morning temperatures have been and will continue to be in the low to mid 30’s with the daytime highs being in the upper 40’s. Sorry, but thats November weather, WHAT HAPPENED TO FALL??? So the second reason that training hasn’t started so great is that because of the weather, both my allergies and the possibility that I have a slight headcold starting have caused me to feel run down. I don’t think I have the flu (or H1N1) or anything, but I just feel blah.

My legs seem to have recovered for the most part from Saturday, I got in a few miles on Sunday just to stretch out and then 6 miles yesterday and another 8 today. Tomorrow I expect to get 10 in, if I feel okay, but my fear is the cold weather. I’m not sure if running in the cold is a good idea when you don’t feel good, I can’t believe its helping anything but it hasn’t seemed to stop me in the past. The good thing is I know when to throw in the towel and call it a day if I don’t feel good.

So I took some time to make the best elevation map that I could for Philly. It doesn’t appear the hills will be anywhere as bad as Baltimore was, but they’ll still be there. The biggest thing to deal with will be the cold, so I’ll have the opportunity to start doing that this week. I just hope that the weather eases up a little bit, i’m not ready to pull out the pants and heavy, heavy gear yet.. So with my elevation map, i’m starting to plan the strategy for the race, I’m hoping again just to finish it. I should get in a few more 20+ milers over the next couple weeks in the cold just to get prepped.

My tasks for tonight are to start digging out the cold weather clothes (NO PANTS YET) and then to actually start to plan for next years marathon season (the spring at least). I’m looking to do maybe 2 spring marathons, but I have to decide which ones .. I’ve always wanted to tackle the Ocean Drive marathon again, just because I blew it last time, but i’m not sure if there is a better ‘early’ marathon than that.. i’ll have to do some research. My in-laws live in New England, and the Providence Marathon is the first weekend of May, so i’m thinking about making it a long weekend, running the race and then doing some visiting .. then maybe, Gods Country marathon? I’ve heard both horror stories about that one, but we’ll see, no commitments yet.