Recovery

I'm so lucky to be able to work remotely for my old company back in Spokane. I don't know how much longer it's going to last, but I seriously love the work and being able to dictate my own hours. Right now, I have two grants that are due by 5pm on Friday. I have so much work to do on them, but my mind keeps going elsewhere. Like - have any new blog posts gone up? What's a good book about running marathons? Did White Rock Racing make their registration for their events live so I can register/see how much they cost?? Man. Right now all I can think about is running and blogging. Probably because I'm new to both. And I want to do better.

My running hero right now is Skinny Runner. She is doing 3 marathons over the course of a week in April. Cra-Zy! I can't even imagine being able to run that far. I just don't have the stamina. BUT, I find it very inspiring and cannot wait to hear about her running adventures. I've also been reading another blog by Running Aimlessly, who is training for a 50k  50 mile race. Holy crud! People do that?!? I'm just so incredibly impressed by people who run long distances. Just everyday folks, running. A lot. It's just incredible!

I signed up for the New Year's Double here in Dallas. On New Year's Eve, I'm registered for the full marathon, and on New Year's Day, I'm registered for the 5k (planning to walk/crawl that one!). I'm so excited and nervous for the marathon - and it's still 9 months away! I just can't wait to get started on training. However, I know I have to do a few things in order to be able to run the marathon. First, I need to increase my speed. My half-marathon this past Sunday was done in 2hours, 53 minutes. I would really like to shave off at least 15 minutes by my May half-marathon. In order to accomplish this, I'm going to start incorporating some weight lifting into my work out routines, making sure I'm doing some good core exercises. I'm hoping that gaining some more strength will allow me to propel myself a little further, a little faster. I'm also going to start training at a faster pace and doing some interval training.

My first goal, though, is to get my legs back to feeling normal! Yesterday, I did a short, very slow (like 3 mph slow) walk at the gym. My legs were still killing me and it hurt to move. Today, I woke up feeling lots better, but still took it easy at the gym. I did 3.5 miles, but at 3.9 mph. Since I am fairly new to running, I am not really sure how long I should really take recovering from the half marathon. I'm assuming that 5 days is a decent amount of time to take it easy. I'm taking a rest day tomorrow, and then hopefully Friday I'll be able to run 3-4 miles at a regular pace. After the weekend, I hope to be back to a regular training schedule.

Okay, I have sufficiently procrastinated! Now back to writing grants.