Its hard to think that its been a week since the last update on my blog, but its been a hectic week. Christmas time always causes me to focus on other things besides writing here, but I haven't forgotten about my training. I'm almost through the first week of a 14 week training program for my spring marathons. The week started out not too cold, then got really cold and then it warmed up and rained (which is better than snow I guess)... my hope is that since the weather has been so wacky in December, that it will settle down in January (I can only hope though ..)

I wrote a few weeks back about my struggle between running and the holiday calories, unfortunately, the holiday calories seems to have won the battle. I put on close to 5 pounds in the last month, which isn't helping my training, but I think since i'm in the swing of things now, it should hopefully come off pretty easily. I've committed to eating better and staying away from the garbage ... which has helped me only put on 5 pounds in my recovery time.

So today my training pointed me towards another 14 miler, like last week, and the one thing i've found after two weeks of running this distance is that I seriously have to slow down my long run as the weeks go on. I'm happy that I can hit a decent time and everything, but I started to die towards the end today ... which means there is NO way i'll make it to 16 to 18 and then to 20 again if I don't slow down and focus. In looking back at my fall training, I was doing 14 miles in around 2:03, today I finished in 1:57 .. so I have some work to do to keep my pace. It didn't help that the weather was awful, rain, windy, but only cold when running east into the 20 mph wind... I took two hats with me because of the rain and ended up dropping one of them along the way (my daughter and I headed out after my run to find it, and thankfully we found it)

I finally fully registered and setup my travel plans for the Flying Pig marathon on May 2nd .. I'm in the closest hotel I can be in and have most of the day on Saturday to tour the town since I have an early flight into Cincinnati. Sunday, after the race, I have to gather up quickly and catch a 12:45pm flight home ... thats the last flight out of CVG (Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky International Airport) until 7:45pm that night, which in looking at things, I just don't think I can kill that much time after a marathon... it'll be hard enough to kill time on Saturday, but at least there is the expo to pass some time.

So my focus for this training season is keeping the pace, keep up on hill work and speed work and getting ready for the wind and the cold ... this late March marathon along Ocean Drive in south Jersey is always unpredictable. I've done the 10-miler 3 times, and the marathon once, and each year I did it, the weather was totally different, so you never know what to expect.

Well, on to rest, I have another 8 miler tomorrow as we start to ramp the miles up over 50 this week .. it won't be long until I'm back to 20 milers on the weekend, although I think i'm ready for the challenge again!