It Can Always Be Worse

Greetings to you all!

Well, let me tell you something right off the bat: if taking one week off the track greatly improves my performance for the next week, then 2 weeks off the track makes me want to puke and die when I finally get back out there.

I should have known better, but I had hope that after giving my body a lot of rest over the last 2 weeks that I could strut right out onto the track and pick up where I left off - better than where I left off! But no such luck. 8x800 quickly deteriorated to 4x800. At least they were all 3:30. Oh well. I ran a 1 mile warm-up and two mile cool-down, so I still got 5 miles in and 2 of them were 7 minute miles, so I'm still happy with that. I know I still have endurance because of my ability to go out and run into the double digits without to much trouble. Now, it's just a matter of getting faster and stronger again.

Note to all of you: recovery is good! 2 week breaks are bad!

Learn from my mistakes, kids! It was painful, but there's always next week. I'll try to do 6x800 next week and then go up to 8x800 every other week until this whole race is over.

The Race
Speaking of the race, I checked out the Honolulu Marathon website yesterday for the first time in a long time and found all sorts of new fun things. You can check it out here. My favorite part is that ominous clock counting down in the upper right hand corner. My second favorite part is when you click on course map. SWEEEET! I cannot WAIT to run up Diamond Head during the 25th mile of a marathon. FRICKIN' AWESOME!!! (that was sarcasm, in case any of you didn't pick up on that).

In further my preparation for this adventure, I just registered for the Honolulu Marathon Readiness Series. It's series of 5 races leading up to the marathon to help you gauge how well you're coming along, I guess. The first one is August 15, and is a 15K. That's 9.32 miles. I'm getting ridiculously excited to race. I can't wait to see how I stack up against the rest of the people in my age group, and how fast I can run over a longer distance when I have a goal and I'm not just plodding along to rack up miles. Competing, even if it's all in good fun, makes training seem less like....training. It gives you a sense of accomplishment and makes it feel like you're actually getting results.

Plus, it's really, really fun to beat the boys ;)

*A quick note - This was all actually written and meant to be posted yesterday (which was Wednesday) but my stupid computer spazzed out and the last auto save was about half way through. So this morning, I had recreate it as best I could. Not that you really needed to know all this. Just for your info ;)