A New Beginning

And just like that, it's over. At the moment, I don't really have any running plans in the immediate future. In years past, I'd would take some pretty serious downtime after the completion of the Chicago Marathon. I probably won't be doing that this time around. I will take things easy for a few weeks, just to make sure all the little creaks and pains go away, but that will probably be the extent of my downtime. I kind of look forward to getting back to just regular running for a while.

Actually, it's hard to make too plans right now because my wife and I are expecting our third child in early December. Well, actually, the baby is due in December, but we are really expecting it sometime in November. Kelly has a history of early pregnancies. So, once the baby is born, there is going to be a few weeks there where everyone in the house will just go into survival mode. Running probably won't be a real high priority during this time. From a running standpoint, this baby is really coming at a perfect time. It fits perfectly into my downtime. I didn't plan it this way. Really.

As far as the race goes, I'm mostly pleased with how it turned out. For the first time in a long time, I was able to pretty much maintain pace for the entire marathon distance. I did run a one minute positive split for the second half of the race, but that was more a factor of the wind than anything. While I was out there running, I felt like for the first time ever, I was actually racing a marathon instead of just running it. It was a good feeling.

Having said that, I think there are some areas in my training that I can improve on. From May 8th - July 30th of this year, I averaged 100 miles per week. During this time, I was over the 100 mile mark for the week 11 out of the 12 weeks. However, once August hit, my mileage and consistency took a big hit. It was pretty much inevitable due to other things going on in my life, but it is still an area that I can improve on for next year. In the months of August and September my mileage slipped to about 70 miles per week, and I only topped the 100 mile mark once. If I would have been able to maintain that 100 mile workload through the end of the training cycle, I have little doubt that 2:36 would have been possible.

Another area that I know I need to work on is to incorporate more speedwork into my routine. This was really my first year consistently running big miles, so the plan all along was to just get the miles in and only run fast when I felt like I could. I think that philosophy helped me stay injury free for the year. However, with a year under my belt of doing this, I think I should be able to work in more hard stuff and still be able to keep injuries at bay.

Speaking of injuries, now seems like a perfect time to actually go to the podiatrist to get some pains in my feet looked at. I've been dealing with an on-again, off-again case of Plantar Fasciitis for about, oh, as long as I can remember. I've never actually had it looked at by anyone, so it would probably make some sense to do that now. I don't know why I hate going to the doctor so much, I just do. Also, I have been dealing with some pretty serious pain at the base of my big toe for about 2 years now. Obviously it has been manageable or I wouldn’t have been running through it for 2 years, but it does hurt all the time, so it's probably a good idea to see what I'm dealing with. My knee, which allegedly has a slight tear of the ACL, has improved quite a bit since the summer and I think with a few weeks of easy mileage it should become a non-factor going forward. I will most likely be retiring from the softball circuit for a while just to ensure I don't do any further damage to the knee.

As far as goals for next year, I think eventually I would like to be able to consistently run under 16 minutes for the 5K and I would really like to be under 2:30 for the marathon. I'm probably a lot closer to the 5K goal that I am to the marathon goal, but realistically, I think I could possibly achieve both in 2007 if I can stay healthy and really work on my speed. My endurance has always been my big limiting factor when it came to running prior to this year, but I think now, it may actually be my speed. I'm not sure how that will affect my training going forward, but I would imagine that it will. The road to my 2007 goals started today with a big 4 miles on the treadmill at the gym. You know what they say...Rome wasn't built in a day.