18 Mile Long Run

I knocked out an 18 mile long run on Saturday.  I woke up at 4:20 to hit the trail by 5:15.  My friends Al, Sandy, and POJ were there also.  There was also a guy named Jim who is training for Boston.

Anyway, after my “surprise” 16 miler of a couple of weeks ago I decided to approach this marathon unlike any other I’ve ever done.  I followed up the 16 with a 10 miler last week and the 18 miler this week.  From here, I’ll back down to 10 next week and then undertake the following:

20
12
21
14
22
16
20
7
Race

Though I’m certain that at some point between now and April 25th I will “never run another marathon”…my tentative plan is to follow up the Nashville Marathon with a big tour of Texas marathons:

Marathon to Marathon October 2009
San Antonio in November 2009
Dallas in December 2009
Houston in January 2010
Austin in February 2010

I ran Austin 5 times in a row from 2000 to 2004 and have now officially skipped it 5 times in a row from 2005 to 2009.  It’s time to start another streak.

Nashville Marathon – training

In keeping with my nearly perfect record of “never running another marathon” shortly after finishing one…it’s time to start training for Nashville. 

The race is on 4/25/2009.  I was supposed to run 10 miles on Saturday to kick it off…and it turned into a 16 miler (how did that happen??).  It was a hilly route and I ran it at a faster pace than I’ve been running my daily runs.  We’ll have to see if that’s a harbinger of good tidings or a black swan of some variety.

The race is 12 or 13 weeks away depending on how you count ’em…or when “your” week starts.

http://www.cmmarathon.com