FORTY ONE MILES

Starting off Saturday's hot long 18 mile run with Portland Marathon Clinic along the waterfront in Portland.

Last week I vowed to hit my marathon training hard and I was able to come through and hit all my runs. I'm feeling it though as my legs have been tired and worn ever since my long run on Saturday. During this marathon training cycle 41 miles may be the most I do in a week as my high weeks top off around 40 miles. Eventually I think they'll need to top off around 50 if I ever plan to get into the low 3s marathon time wise, but I'm a ways from that.

Right now forty one miles is certainly a lot for my body. The good news is I'm not really sore or anything, my legs are just tired and feel dead. Once I get running typically they start feeling better. This weekend was particularly rough because I had an 18 mile training run in the morning (see below) and then promptly followed that up with 18 holes of golf in the afternoon. Talk about a day on your feet. Then the next day, Sunday, I spent most of the day up at Mt. Hood at the Adventure Park walking around before coming back for the race with Brandon on Sunday evening. Phew!

The training run Saturday morning was certainly memorable. Saturday reached a high of 95 degrees and by the time we finished the run it was already in the 80s. I think when we started running it was about 70 but it certainly heated up in those two hours and was very muggy. I ran it with the Portland Marathon Clinic group again, so while it was hot, it was nice to have company suffering right along with you. Plus their aid stations are a nice relief, especially on hot days like these.

Tentative plans are a marathon pace run tonight at run group, followed by six miles of speedwork on Thursday. Hopefully my legs will feel up to that. On Friday I leave for the Umpqua River and will be camping there until Sunday, so I'll try to get a twelve mile long run in and take this week as a "down" week. I ran twelve miles during this same trip last year and it went pretty well... I'll probably just run that same route.