a reminder and a goal

Yesterday I double dipped.

No, I did not indulge in two scoops of ice cream.  I ran twice in one day.  I did not have to, I just chose my own crazy.

Why crazy?  Crazy because I haven't been running a lot lately, just maintenance miles.  Maintenance for me is three miles three times a week.

So yesterday I ran three miles at 5:30 am, and three miles at 6pm.  Why?  There were two reasons.  The first being that I run regularly with RP in the morning and we have been missing a few runs here or there due to illness, weather or schedule conflicts.  Nothing serious, just enough to mess with the regularity of our schedule and I want desperately to get back to our normal, predictable routine.  The second being I was asked to fill in for a coach at the Tuesday night running group yesterday and I love running with that group so I said yes knowing that I would end up double dipping.

Though not in my regular repertoire, double dipping is not all that uncommon.  Many runners will run twice in a day to break up longer mileages in their training.  I plan to do it myself as my weekday mileages get higher in my marathon training.  I just do not recommend doing a lot if you are not used to it, you need to work up to higher mileages slowly and not go out and run ten miles if you haven't even run one before.  There is so much good advice out there about buliding up your mileage slowly to prevent injury.

And my body last night reminded me of that.  While I did not struggle to run either time, I suffered the niggling fear that I may have injured myself yesterday.  After I got home last night my right knee 
was a touch sore.  I ran the equivalent of last weeks weekly mileage on one day.  I should not have done that, I know this.  I intend to let that feeling in my knee last night serve as the reminder to not let my desire to do great things this year to overpower the wisdom I have gathered over the years about training.

As a result, I took it easy on my legs this morning at my workout. No need to make matter worse.  And no more heroic jumps in mileage!

I have begun to look into training plans.  We have about 36 weeks until the marathon, and most training plans are roughly 18 weeks long.  I have a good amount of time to investigate and figure out what I want to do and I intend to use it wisely.  I want to fit my marathon training into my life instead of fitting my life into my training. This lead me to look up some marathon training books at the library.  I found a great promise in the intro of the invitingly titled book, The non runner's marathon guide for women: "... this book offers advice on how to avoid death while training for a marathon.". 

All right, you hooked me, that is my new goal:

I want to avoid death as I train for this marathon.