Taking 2 days completely off following race, but a few thoughts I needed to save for posterity... Legs ached in several places yesterday, but overall mobility was good. I even had to trot out to the mailbox to get the mail in the rain and wind last evening (good that I could trot, bad that I had to because it told me exactly where every ache was...) Today, even better. Expecting little to no obvious residual soreness tomorrow. Had the on-top-of-the-world feeling all day yesterday and thru this AM. Suddenly, at around 5PM it hit me......I wonder if I should've pushed a bit harder since I had so much juice left in me to the end. Why can't I just enjoy it??? This is supposed to mark my 2 "down" weeks, when I'd intended to just run for fun. However, I found myself starting at my blank training calendar and finally couldn't stand it. I had to put in a few entries, but kept them of the "Recovery" or "Easy" run nature and only enough for a few days. I can already tell I won't be able to keep from plotting my next several months out though. Decided to institute weekly Steady State (threshold) run during Base period (it shouldn't all be slow, right?). I asked for coaching lessons from Greg McMillan for Xmas, and this dovetails into his philosophy, so hopefully my next few weeks will gracefully merge into a training plan we develop when I begin. I also hope I can manage to take advice from a coach. Since I never ran in HS/College (or really did any sports), I really don't have a clue what it's like to have a coach. But I think I know enough to know I don't know everything. Finally, I can't wait to tackle another marathon. Only running 2 a year seems so....minimalistic. After all, I did manage to bounce back 7 weeks after running a marathon PR to run another marathon PR, so isn't that a good thing I should continue? Is there anyone out there that's fairly competitive that does this? The recoveries certainly seem to be getting easier as I go. Deciding which Spring marathon to run is hard. On one hand, I'd like to return to my first (Yakima River Canyon Marathon), which is fairly small, so I can place much better. On the other hand, its in early April, so I'm not sure if I'll be ready for a sub-3 by then. Oh, and there's a *big* hill.... Okay, obviously need to get out and run tomorrow since that's about all I can think about today!
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