So, onward and upward! Since I did manage to save my body from the race I'm still able to keep on trucking with my training. I did spend a few days feeling like I lost 6 months of training but have now realized that I can just keep building on it. The only rough mental aspect about what happened is that I wasn't planning on training for a marathon through the summer down here in South Florida, but I'll make it with a little help from my treadmill. I'm also planning for a trip back up to Northern MN in late August to early September for two or three weeks. Having that sitting out there is a great motivator to endure through the tough conditions down here. Hopefully, we can keep getting some lightening free rain a few days a week in the mornings so I can get in a good hunk of my workouts done outside.
I haven't nailed down a race yet for fall, but it'll be earlier than my original plan so I'm hoping something in October. I hope to work this out in the next week or two. If I'm able to race earlier, it should make the local races down here over the winter much more fun! I missed so many with the taper and then injury post CIM that I can't wait to have a fun season down here with the girls!!!
This past week was nice and intense and I'm feeling good about my fitness. It's always worrisome, trying to maintain things in these conditions, but I think a mix of "easier outside"/"hard inside" and monitoring my heart rate should keep me going strong. This week was a 20 miler with a bunch of tempo stuff mixed in, that's always fine in the beginning and a complete challenge towards the end...I hope it gets easier over time, I would like to learn to really push when my legs are fatigued. Mid-week, I was totally tricked into doing intervals! It looked like some hillwork, oh no, totally felt like pure/fast speedwork. And, then today was a nice tempo run...11 with 6 miles at pace and I felt pretty darn solid!
Also, to add on to my rambling post, I did have an AWESOME training cycle sans Duluth! I finally got my 5k PR and managed a nice PR in Ogden! Running Boston as a training run was also a really cool and fun experience, so I did get in a spring marathon even though I didn't race it. So, the season was far from a loss, just one bad race. I certainly can't complain about that!



