I didn’t expect to bump the miles up at all this week compared to last week, although I found myself off the ‘normal’ path yesterday and doing the exact opposite. I decided to stray from the course I run along the dyke near my house and venture off on the bike trails through the woods. I figured its the same distance as the normal paved path and would allow me to prepare for the ‘cinder and tow-paths’ coming up in the Lehigh Valley Hospital marathon in two weeks. The dirt paths were nice to run on (at the start), but then turned terribly muddy and narrow .. in addition, they were winding all throughout the woods, and they would branch off all over the place, so I wasn’t entirely sure where I was going at any one time. Thankfully the river was on one side of me, so I kept the river on the right side of me, and looked for the railroad overpass .. it took me some time to find it, but I did find it. I ended up doing around 9 miles instead of 8 miles yesterday (again, just an estimate, it was hard to figure the exact distance), but I did eventually find my way and got back to the car in one piece. It was a nice run, all my runs are feeling good as I feel myself starting to peak, which is a good thing.

I wrote over the weekend about the upcoming weather this week, and this weekend, and was concerned about the heat and the rain. Well, the early forecasts were wrong and Tropical Storm Fay is staying far south from here for quite awhile and should only be some minor showers by the time it gets here next week, so no rain this weekend. I also wrote about the potential heat, and how the mornings were going to be warm to be running, and this morning was the coldest morning run since early in May. I was surprised. The good part is that since its August, it does warm up very fast, 9 degree warmup in just over an hour and fifteen minutes, so it wasn’t too bad, but reminded me of the freezing cold days of February. I successfully got my last midweek LONG run of 14 miles in before I start the first taper, and it felt good. I was surprised that I ran it in about 1:55, which equates to an 8:13/mile pace, which over 14 miles is pretty good. Maybe I will get a good time at Lehigh Valley, we’ll just have to see.

I did an interesting review of my training log since I finished the Delaware Marathon in May, I’ve run just under 750 miles in under 12 weeks .. do you know that with those miles logged, I could have run from my house to Charleston, South Carolina (it calculates at 748 miles)? Thats how far i’ve run since May, its amazing .. I think it just makes you think about your mileage a little differently when you look at it like that.

Thankfully I only have one more day of hard running before a day off, I am getting tired at this point, the legs are telling me that. I’m quite sore, but have no specific pain point right now … just everything kind of aches ..

I doubt i’ll do speedwork tomorrow, I may just exchange it for an additional pace workout. If you read back, I was doing Yasso 800s when I started training, however i’ve lost interest in it. Someone I knew told me about that program, and I followed it for a bit, but have been pretty inconsistent with it (plus I almost injured myself last week) .. I feel I get as much out of a pace workout as I do a speed workout, but less risk of injury (especially at this critical time prior to the season starting).

Thats about it for whats happening, just trying to eat clean .. and staying away from grape koolaid .. its a long story..