The Training Season

The last week I went on a tweeting drought. All the excitement from being on the road completely died and life became wonderfully simple again. Not much to tweet about. I ate, slept, trained, got my usual doses of therapy, and shared some long meals and teas with friends and family. It was quite a drastic shift from the past three months that have been filled with travel, training and racing. It’s always a change when this time of year rolls around. It’s a welcomed change from the fast paced life that enables me to train and be fully prepared for the challenge of running a marathon.

I am thankful that there are different seasons in life and training. I have learned to embrace each season realizing how important it is to allow the body, mind and spirit to fully cycle through each. My current season of marathon training is my favorite. I love the simple life of training and going after a goal with everything I have.

My last week of training included one 26 mile day, one 24 mile day, and one 0 mile day. The theme of my training is to make the hard days long and hard and to make the easy days short and very light. I usually slow down anyone I run with on the easy days.

This past week I had the pleasure of training with my little brother Chad. He spent the week with us here in Flagstaff before returning to Riverside to begin his 5th year at UCR. I must say I was impressed with his fitness level. We were able to trade off sharing the pacing duties for our workouts, which was great practice for me in preparation for Chicago, which will be paced for 20 miles or so. Since I haven’t run a paced race since 2008 I need to spend a little bit of time learning to settle and run behind people. I was bummed when Chad had to leave yesterday, but I am hoping that its just a taste of what the future holds.