Its been the toughest week of training that i’ve had for quite some time, but it has its benefits I think. I feel my legs getting stronger, i’m not so fearful of hills anymore and I actually feel good despite being tired .. here is a quick summary of my weeks training:

Saturday – 20 miles long run
Sunday – 12 miles (hills)
Monday – 6 mile recovery (with inclines)
Tuesday – 10 miles (hills)
Wednesday – 12 miles GA
Thursday – 6.5 miles speed (800s)

Surprisingly, I had the most difficult run today though since I haven’t actually done speedwork in quite some time. I wasn’t worried about following the Yasso’s 800’s that I was doing during the summer, the goal was more to just run a fast lap, then a slow lap and so on .. as long as I picked up the pace, it was good enough for me… The thing that really didn’t help was the heat and humidity, it was real bad today (especially for September), I was quite dehydrated by the time the run was over.

So tomorrow i’ll rest up in preparation for a 22 miler on Saturday. The weather is supposed to be decent for the weekend, not too hot and not too cold, so just the way I like it. I’ve decided to wind down my training next week before the last 20 miler the Saturday before the race .. and then take the taper week real easy (much easier than I did for the first marathon). I really think the fact that I pushed the miles even during the taper week actually hurt me in the end, so we won’t make that mistake twice.

I wrote the other day about how I enjoyed my run because of the new music I had on my Ipod .. I found yet another bunch of old mp3’s I had of the music that I like, just like hitting the jackpot. Speaking of music, I’ve had a tough end of summer with my electrical devices. My portable Sirius Stilleto mp3/satellite reciever bit the dust about 3 weeks ago, it just couldn’t take the constant heat, sweat, etc. My current Ipod shuffle had to have the reset utility run on it last night to keep it going for what i’m thinking is the same cause … I do wrap up my music devices in baggies with tape when I head out to keep them safe, but somehow they just don’t seem to make it. But this seems to happen every August .. so its nothing new.

It’ll be nice to not get up early tomorrow though, this getting up at 4:50am each morning is starting to get to me. I know i’ll end up laying there wide awake anyway, but the thought is nice anyway..