I felt a little sadness come over me as I completed my last real ‘long’ run for awhile as I head into the taper for the Harrisburg marathon next week. I intended to get 14 miles in, but ended up cutting it short at 13.25 due to both time constraints and the urge to ‘change up the scenery’ during the run. Regardless I still went over my intended mileage as expected, so I don’t think it hurt anything … (its actually the same distance I ran the week before the Run for the Red in the spring)…

Its going to be hard to make the transition out of marathon training and into living a regular life again. I thought about it this morning that out of the 46 weeks we’re into this year, I went only 8 of those weeks without ‘training’ for a marathon. If I think back to January, I was injured at the start of the year, but by the third week of the year, I was into preparing for the Ocean Drive marathon … then from there, I jumped right into the training for the Pocono Marathon (run for the red) because I did so crappy at Ocean Drive.. That takes me right until the first week of May. Then from there I rested a bit (and did my spring racing tour as I called it), and then first week of June headed right into training for Steamtown … that took me up until the first week of October, and then 5 weeks later, i’m here… thats nuts.

Only thing planned after the marathon next week is the annual Diamond Run (9 miler) in Berwick. I enjoy doing that and its a nice thing to do on Thanksgiving … from there I might catch a 5K or so at the end of the month and then start to ease off for a few weeks before planning for the spring. I know my intended schedule for the spring, just haven’t planned out yet how exactly i’m going to train for it. My goal after the Diamond run is to get in the gym and crosstrain a bit as well as to keep running … I don’t want to put the weight back on that I worked so hard to lose but also feel that my running will benefit from some cycling, elliptical and possibly swimming.

I have my membership at the YMCA in Wilkes-Barre still until January, but will probably look into a gym thats about a mile from work. The Y just isn’t convenient, and although the gym near work doesn’t have a pool, I have access to the Dallas school pool and Misericordias pool if I actually decide that I want to swim (which up until now, hasn’t happened). I hope to still get outside once in awhile on weekends and run when the weather isn’t brutally cold….. thats the real big difference between last year and this year is that I don’t intend to go outside when its freezing and run, at least not until February when training starts again.

So as I come up on the end of the season, I’ll go through the blog and look back on the last season and see where I need to make improvements, if any. I’m satisfied with my evolution as a competitive runner in the last 2 years, and hope it continues the way it has, but things have really changed in life with my new job and all, but I still can make time for the things I love, like running. I know its an addiction, so just not being in training for a few weeks will make me nuts, so stay tuned, it should be interesting as the weeks go on…

I will reduce the miles this week thank heavens as I taper, and start carb-loading on Thursday (along with tons of water) … I’ll stay over in Harrisburg saturday night, then run the race Sunday and then head to Philly to head off to San Francisco for the week (and Oracle OpenWorld!) Next Sunday will be brutal for me, but well worth it .. I hope to write during the week as I always say (and never seem to do), we’ll just have to see how the schedule goes.