Back in Training - 11 weeks and counting

I am the world's worst blogger. And since I have no one reading these I don't feel so bad. My last post was in October so I could do a big recap of everything from the last 10 months or so but why bother. 1/2 Marathon, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, 3 Grand Slams, Memorial Day, 4th of July, Easter have all passed - woohoo....

No, the big thing I have on my mind is that I'm back in training. This will be my first time doing the Philadelphia Distance Run and I'm really excited for it. I thought about it last year but really wasn't interested in doing it because of the grueling training during the summer. But the end of last year I decided that I really needed to do it - physically and mentally. I made the decision that this would be my only 1/2 for this year so watching the runners during the Lehigh Valley Half and not being among them was a bit depressing, but now I'm focused and looking forward to PDR, just 11 weeks away.

I started my training this week. My schedule was supposed to be Tues 2 - Thurs 5 (Tempo for 3) - Fri 2 - Sun 6 for a total of 15 miles. What it turned out to be was Mon 2.5 - Wed 3.2 (5K for LVRR Summer Series - pitiful but still did the miles) - Sat 5 (Tempo for 3) - Sun 6 (Yay!) for a total of 17.5 miles. I'm in awe, and a bit achey. I'm mad at myself for waiting until Saturday for the tempo run - I told myself that since I raced on Wednesday doing a tempo run on Thursday was too much, but then I didn't account for the slug I was on Friday because I had 1 (or 2) too many beers on Thursday night. So I pushed myself to do it Saturday and it was my best run of the week, even better than a lot of recent runs. But then doing my 6 today I was definitely feeling a bit overwhelmed. I could have settled at 5 or 5 1/2 today, especially because the loop I ran was exactly 5 1/2 but when I got to that starting point after looping, I felt I needed to prove to myself that 6 could be done and I needed to do it.

Tomorrow is a rest day, thankfully, and the run schedule should be pretty good to follow on the right days. Looking at Tues 2 - Thurs 5 (speed for 3) - Fri 2 - Sun 7 for a total of 16 miles. The only day I'll struggle with is Sunday and I'll just have to be up early for it. I'm going to CitiField for a Mets game and I think it's at 1.

So I've got one week down, 11 to go. This should be great!