Crucial

My new mantra: these next 5 weeks are crucial. I kept repeating it to myself during my run today.

Today's stats...

Type of run: Endurance run (run a mile, walk a minute)
Distance: 6 miles (I love my Garmin)
Time: 1:18 (not bad at all!)
People I knew: none
Weird people: 1 (this woman was waving her arms around as she ran. She looked as though she was swatting flies).
Pain: eh. Towards the end my ankles and knees started to hurt, but it's to be expected with this new interval thing I'm doing. Nothing major.
Pain afterwards: Yikes. I'm stiff.
Nutrition: Wonderful (seriously)
Hydration: Eh. 1 liter of water, 1/2 liter Diet Coke
Pace: Overall, 13:11 (want to get it down to at least 12:30 before April 29).
Strongest miles: 2(running from weird guys) and 5 (woo-hoo! End strong)

I feel fantastic, felt great during the run and felt like a real runner (instead of a run-walker). I owe a bit of this to Andy: I started off slower than normal (trying to hold back and save some energy for later, like he's being trained to do) and also he gave me the inspiration to try to end my intervals for the shorter runs.

I told Ginny (one of my coaches) that I was doing Nashville. She raised an eyebrow and said, "Have you ever been to Nashville." Yes, I know about the hills. Help! So now she has me doing 30 minutes of hill work on my long-run days and told me to run the bleachers on Tuesday track practice and to strengthen my quads. I see a lot of lunges in my future.

Crucial. The next 5 weeks are crucial. I will train. I will train hard. I will train smart. I will knock time off my last marathon. I will have fun. I will get stronger. I will not hurt myself. I will cross-train.

Crucial.

Cheers!