Another week down in marathon training, and 16 more to go!

I booked the airline and hotel accommodations this week for San Diego, and my kids are so excited to see the beach again! So excited in fact that the day after I booked our travel arrangements, I came home to my son already packing his suitcase for San Diego! When I asked him what he had packed, he rolled his suitcase in full of toys! :) When I asked him about packing his clothes, he told me that he would be packing all of his clothes in my suitcase! I couldn't help but laugh!

The running this week was great. My piriformis hasn't been bothering me and my legs have been feeling really fresh! With only one running day on the treadmill, it always makes for a good week! Jeremy and I had ran our normal two 4-mile runs, and then on Saturday, we increased the mileage to 7 miles. When we were preparing for our marathon training, we had decided to keep our base long run at 6 miles for the last 3 1/2 months, and I'm so glad we did! Although the weather was a bit windy and cold and the sidewalks and streets still had some snow cover, we actually ran our fastest 7 miles since we started running together. Our time was 59:33, and remarkably, it was a run in which we felt so good that it was hard to believe we were running so fast! Those are the kinds of runs that keep me excited and motivated to be a runner...it's what it's all about!

After the run we had talked about how we both agreed that by incorporating more hydration (Cytomax) during our runs and doing more cross training and weight lifting on the off days, it had helped us become stronger runners! While I thought at one time we had found our "comfortable pace" for the marathon, I now feel that we really haven't found that yet... I truly thought that we would be averaging 9-9 1/2 minute miles for the duration of our training, but I think we'll just have to see how we feel from week to week on the longer runs in a few months.

The winter is seeming to be endless with yet another snow storm on it's way this week. I am just hoping that we can run outside as much as possible. I am still thinking warm thoughts and am ready to feel the beautiful San Diego sun!