It feels good to take a day off from running, although as you can tell by the time of this post, I still get up in the morning just as early, but at least there isn’t the need to be up and moving and out the door. Especially this morning it feels good, its ultra-cold outside (low 30’s) … these types of temperatures never make you want to head out, but somehow I tend to keep going out anyway because its really not that bad after awhile. If I recall back to November last year, this was about the time that I started to fall off the running wagon, and getting my runs in was brutally difficult, so its good to be in a more stable place this year doing what I love to do.

I managed to get in a 6 mile speed workout in on Thursday, doing the Yasso 800’s as their called … I would do an 800, then a cool down, then another and so on. My 800 time was probably a little faster than it should have been, but not as fast as it was in the summer. I’m still recovering from the pain in my hip flexors and don’t want to irritate it more than I need to. Its been pretty calm over the last couple of days, so i’m hopeful that the worst is over. My intention as I wrote this past weekend is to try to increase my pace somewhat because its really fallen off since the Baltimore marathon. I’ve had one decent week already, and expect another one next week.

This weekend is the Harrisburg marathon, looks like the weather is going to be decent for early November, so good luck to anybody running it, you’ll love the course. I did run it 2 years ago, and my thoughts on it overall were that it was a pretty mild course and I actually PR’d that day, so it was a memorable marathon for me (but i’ve since broken it). If I recall, it was the first marathon that I learned this whole ‘pace’ thing called NOT GOING OUT TOO FAST! I finished strong, the people were nice, the accommodations were what I expected … no complaints.

Anyway, tomorrow is my last 22 miler of the season since i’m just over 2 weeks from the Philly marathon … next week i’ll still push the pace into and past next weekend, and then taper it down like I did for Baltimore. My plan for that race really worked for me, so i’d like to follow it again. I have to watch though, because this is the ideal time for me to start making excuses to slack off .. we’ve all been there, and its set me up to fail in the past, so fighting that is a whole other ballgame. The weather is supposed to be kind of brisk tomorrow morning, but its good prep for the race in a few weeks…