BREAKING THE CENTURY MARK

Coming into the finish line with other volunteers after sweeping the course (and the reason I had to run on a Friday night).

Well, at 108 miles, May was my first month above 100 miles since way back in September of 2015 right before my back to back marathons. It's been a long road back, but it feels good! My training for the Marine Corp Marathon is going well, I've now completed the first four weeks with perfect marks. I've hit every run as scheduled and my body feels great.

I've found the schedule really helpful. I've always done well following a plan... I feel a commitment to it and the excuses my brain likes to generate seem to calm down. I know if I skip a run on a Tuesday I'll have to make it up on a Wednesday, so I just tend to go out and do it on Tuesday. I'm going to get my runs in barring injury or something like that, which wasn't always the case earlier in the year. It was really easy to intend to run four days a week and slip to three. Not anymore though!

Twice now I've ran my long after work on Friday because my Saturday morning was busy and would conflict with my normal long run. That just goes to show you that I am not making any excuses, these runs are going to happen one way or another. Sure, I just got done with a long week of work and it's the last thing I want to do, but dammit, I'll get my 14 miles in. I watched the bright, sunny day turn into dusk and it was actually kind of pleasant to be honest. Now, every week doing this would suck, but as a one off it was completely doable.

Slow and steady build toward marathon competency.

Another fun thing about my long runs recently is that I am back into "new longest run" territory. Since I kind of had to hit the reset button with the whole arthritis thing, I am getting a feeling of accomplishment as I slowly build my mileage back up. Today I ran 15 miles and it was the furthest I had ran in almost three years. So that was cool! While previously it might have just felt like another run in the beginning of a marathon training slog, this time around each of these runs has a little extra meaning to it.

Anyways, just wanted to give an update. Training has been going well, I'm in a groove and hitting my runs. I've even thrown in a few speed workouts and hill runs to keep things interesting. All in all it's very encouraging. Hopefully I can keep the sunny outlook as we enter the critical summer training months. These longest of long runs in the heat are exhausting enough to challenge the mettle of just about anyone, but I've done it before and I can do it again.