New Year’s Resolutions Blog

I can’t believe that in a little over a month I’ll be running a marathon through the (way-too-hilly…) streets of my favorite city! It’s incredible to think that in six months I have come from maybe running 5 miles at a time (and even that seemed far!) to having done several runs over 10 miles! My long slow runs are now about 20 miles, which is just amazing to me. They are long, and they are slowwwww, but they’re not impossible! My body really can do this! It’s hard to believe, though, that I’ll be running more than 6 miles further in the marathon than I’ve ever run before. I used to think I couldn’t even run 6 miles at all! But my confidence is growing, thanks in part to some great runners that have joined me on the way. Thanks so much to Brad, my initial running partner, who still joins me for part of my runs (my runs are his cool-downs from his big workouts!) and to Jennifer, who I’ve met through an SF marathon group, I couldn’t do it without you guys! So close to the goal…

I had the great opportunity to attend the Pre Classic up in Oregon over the weekend! It was an amazing experience. I slacked a little on my running, skipping one day, but made up for it by doing 15 miles, part of it on Pre’s Trail. That’s right, 15 miles–my longest run ever so far! Hard to imagine I’ll be doing 11.2 more miles than that in about a month and a half! Things aren’t getting much faster–I’m still about a 10- or 11-minute mile on long runs–but they are getting less painful, which is nice. I had a nasty run-in (ha, run-in) with runner’s knee a couple weeks ago that set me back some miles, but I have stepped back up again. To help me stay motivated, I’ve been listening to the Phedippidations podcast (made by a guy named Steve, which is cool even though he’s not Prefontaine!), which is a fun podcast for distance runners. Anybody have updates on their New Year’s Resolution?