MARATHON TRAINING TWENTY NINETEEN

Tomorrow, by resting and doing absolutely nothing, I will have completed my second official week of Portland Marathon training. However, as you can see by the calendar off to the right, I actually got in the groove a few weeks back. With the weather officially turning over to "nice," it has not been hard to motivate myself to get out there. And, with a running group almost every night I want to run, they are usually pretty fun too!

My long run distance is already up to 16 miles. My last four weekends have been 13.1, 13.5, 15, and 16. None of those were particularly hard either. The sixteen mile run today was a breeze. So that's really cool. I think after all these years my legs are adapting well and remembering distance after some time off. My legs also being treated for psoriatic arthritis helps. Who knows how long I had it at a low level affecting me. My knees never bug me anymore. Nary a complaint.

Last year, I basically did no speedwork. A couple of races during the training cycle and maybe like three random tempo runs? Nothing structured though. That was on purpose. The whole point of last year was to build mileage and see if my knees would hit a limit at some point. Everything last year went off swimmingly. I honestly think my knees are better than ever. I could do a 100 mile race and I don't think they'd be any worse off than anyone else's knees (I am NOT going to do a 100 miler btw!).

Group long run last Saturday for 15 miles

So, with that said, I am determined to do speedwork this year. Once a week I will do a speed run of some sort. Probably a lot of tempo runs, because that is still something I can do at run group and sometimes even have someone run with me. But I would also like to break off to the track and do some intervals at some point. We'll see. While I am dedicated to one speed run a week, I'm going to just play those by ear. Maybe sometimes I'll feel like doing it on Tuesday. Maybe some weeks I'll wait until Thursday. Just as long as I get it in.

In addition to the speed runs, I plan to do a couple races too. Nothing in stone yet, but a half marathon around the Fourth of July weekend and then probably another half in there somewhere. I meant to do more 5Ks and 10Ks, but those are hard with long runs on Saturday. If I do a lot of tempo runs though, I will basically be doing the same thing, so maybe I can distract myself with shorter races once the marathon cycle is over.

Anyways, that's the update! Can't believe I am in the middle of a training cycle again. At the same time though, it just feels right. What would my summers be without waking up at 6:45am on a Saturday on run for hours on end?