This past week was a real light week as far as miles are concerned, I only chalked up 23 miles plus one day of cross-training. I haven’t run this little amount of miles since back in January sometime, so its a change, but my knees really need it. I intend to continue to take it easy this week, although my long run increase to 9 miles up from 7 this week. I’m now able to comprehend the fact that I have to slow down and let my body rest. As it stands right now, I have 20 weeks of long runs, speed runs, full of hills (up and down and races) to look towards before the marathon … why kill myself now. It doesn’t make me any less of a runner to take it easy for a bit between training cycles, i just wish I wouldv’e done that sooner ..

Either way, the training starts at a low level on Monday, and I’m finally over being sore from the elliptical and the weights I started doing this week. I’m looking forward to this to see how I transform into a machine (of sorts) prior to the race, and I spend so much time researching and reading best practices … but the thing I need to remind myself is to STICK TO MY TRAINING! I tend to have a habit of running more than I should and not sticking to the training I laid out, I think its some sort of disorder I have, so then I peak at my miles WAY to early and can’t sustain the rest of the training …. that WON’T happen this time (remember the Diamond run?). The story behind that is back in the fall when i was training for the first time for the Diamond run, I decided that 14 weeks before the race (2 weeks before my training even started), that I would speed run 11.5 miles to see how fast I can do it. Remember that at this point, my “long” run was only 7-8 miles and I hadn’t yet competed in a race. I ended up blowing out my back and setting myself behind in training as I recouperated … learn from that, it did nothing but cause me grief (and honestly, my back still hurts on occasion from it).

Anyway, I’m looking to mentally prepare myself for the long 20 weeks ahead, and I know I can do it, if I stick to the tips I have collected in the “Training Tips (from others)” section of this blog. This is where it begins.