Rehoboth, I am coming for you!

After my bout of PF last week, I sought the wise and wonderful advice of Loopster (ahem, ahem, Dave) and decided to take action.  I did some serious stick rolling, a home-modified Graston technique, self-massage, and I did 2 important things with my shoes.  1) I took the sock liner (the removable pad thingy) out of my Brooks Pure Flow 2s.  2) I bought a new pair of work shoes. 

It's a little weird at first to run with out the sock liner because you can feel the stitching on the sides.  However, it made a huge difference in how the shoe fit in the toe box and my feet were much, much happier.  The overall fit of the shoe is now even more minimal because there is no squish from the sock liner. 

The past week I had an 8 miler and a 6 miler outside and an 8 miler and 5 miler on the dreadmill.  Outside, I am running at a sub-8 pace with relative ease which has me excited about Rehoboth if I can stay injury-free and healthy.  Inside, I use the dreadmill for recovery runs because I can set it and forget it.  I get so competitive with myself outside--and geez, I'm not even training for anything right--that it is good to have the treadmill force me to go slower.  Plus, I can watch cheesy movies and silly YouTube videos--I'm so easily entertained on the hamster wheel.

I've run 5 marathons and 4 of the 5 marathons I have trained for approximately 10 weeks leading up to the race.  I like to keep a base of being able to knock out 13.1 at any given time so amping up to 20 milers takes me only about a month to 6 weeks.  However, the 10 weeks is by design--I have raced those 4 marathons in mid-March and start my official training right after Christmas--the crazy time in the retail world.

This December marathon will be different for 3 major reasons.

1) It's a big time Loopfest.  I'm nervous (nah, not really, it's gonna be awesome and hello!! my career involves talking to strangers) and excited and cannot wait to go. Arewethereyet??
2) I'm 8 minutes away from a BQ.  I ran 3:43 in Atlanta in March. I ​think​ I can run a 3:35, but it'll take a good day with good conditions to knock off 8 minutes.  Of course I want to BQ, but I also don't want to obsess about it.  But now that I've said it 'outloud' in Loopville, it's likely to follow me around like Pigpen's cloud.  Me and my big mouth....
3) I will have a longer time to train if I choose to.  A longer training cycle is a double-edged sword.  It's good if works, stupid if I overtrain/don't hit my goal. 

So I'm contemplating a longer training cycle.  I have a month or so before I need to get serious about when I should start. Just in time for the heat and humidity to hit the highest point... Geez, maybe I'll reconsider this notion.  But at least the first few weeks shouldn't be all that much different than what I am currently running.  By the time I get into the nitty-gritty workouts, it should (hopefully) be time for FALL RUNNING--aka, the most beautiful time of the year!