Moving Forward...w/o Bloody Nipples

So I had nearly 2 days to bask in my own little personal glory of meeting my marathon goal. I think that's enough.

Now I'm looking ahead towards my next marathon. CIM? Surf City? Tucson?

And what do I set as my next time goal...3:45? 3:40?

These questions will be answered in my head in due time I suppose. I'm giving myself a couple of days off of running, but was already going stir-crazy yesterday from not breaking a sweat. So I hopped on my road bike after work and headed for my gym to do some strength training. Will do more of the same today before putting in my first few recovery miles tomorrow.

But before I completely put San Francisco behind me, I wanted to take a quick look at what I did right in my training leading up to it and what I didn't do or could have improved on.

Things I did wrong:

1) More/Longer Long Runs - after cramping from Mile 19 on in San Diego, I vowed to get in more endurance training in time for this event. The result? Two 18 mile and one 16 mile long runs between the two marathons. That ain't nearly good enough. Even though I staved off cramping until after Mile 22, it was on the fringe from the 'teens til the very end. I need to do better.

2) Longer Tempo Runs - kind of in line with the previous one. My runs @ lactate threshold pace never really exceeded 4 miles per given session. I feel like runs of 5-8 miles could really benefit me for future half/full marathons.


Things I did right:

1) Train for the course - I knew San Francisco would be hilly. I made sure I remembered this by taping the elevation chart to my bathroom door. So I trained accordingly. That meant incorporating hills into long runs, running consistently with my trail group and doing hill intervals where I would have just done them on the track.

2) Tempo Runs - I think this goes without saying but for me, sometimes it takes a lot for me to work up the motivation to do speedwork. And training in the summer just took that much more effort to work up the motivation to run them. But I knew the importance of these runs and made sure I incorporated them into my weekly schedule at least once.

3) Sacrifice Vanity for Optimal Race Day Performance - my decision to lose some weight by putting strength training on hold and just eating better helped me on race day, I'm sure of it. I think there's a pretty significant difference running at around 175 lbs vs 185 or so (my previous weight). Sure, I wasn't as muscular or 'cut' as I once was...but having bulk on was for sheer superficial reasons - no functionality whatsoever as it pertained to my life. Unless you count opening pickle jars.

4) Tape up my nipples on race day - umm...'nuff said.



Can't wait to get back to work!