After four hours of fitful sleep, I decided it was easier to just get up and get the run in. Started at 5:45 AM. Weekly long run on the "cattle road" which takes me out to the bird refuge. I like to call this course "the dykes" because it's a marsh land with miles (and miles) of dykes running through. Awesome place to run. Got to see the business end of two skunks this morning and more birds than I can wrap my mind around. Just guessing on the mileage based on my time. Felt great though, had enough strength at the end to do a couple of surges in the last mile. So glad to be running again! 

Re co ve ry:  Hurts so good. Nice and easy on the fire break road (hilly).

6:30 am, took the dogs up on the fire break road. It took three miles until I felt loose. I'm going to give the ol' six days a week thing a try starting this week...three down three to go. Sunday is my long run and Saturday is for rest.

Reading through this blog has really inspired me to train better, and to develop my mental strength on a whole different level. Thanks to Sasha and all the runners on this blog for generously sharing their experience and support.

6:45 am ran on the cattle rd/dykes. Nice, partly cloudy morning. There was someone in an old fashioned airplane, an open cockpit etc. flying around out there. There are no power lines or buildings, so it must be a great place to fly. He was flying pretty low to the ground and flew right over me a couple of times. Pretty cool. 

First run with my Garmin...yeah! The bad news is, it looks like I've been over estimating my mileages, just by a little though. I may go back on my log here and adjust my previous entries as I re-run the courses over te next week or so. But yeah, I love seeing my pace as I run, and I especially love having an accurate distance, since I run on trails mostly. 

7:00 am. Ran on the junior high field. Each lap, if I hug the outer perimeter, equals a half mile. Just did three today, trying to get through doing my first "six day week" without hurting myself. Tommorrows run will make six. I anitcipate, after my run tommorrow, that the heavens will open up, and the answer to all of lifes questions will be revealed to me. Actually though, I really feel good about my training so far, and I look forward to getting my aerobic base built and solid.

Today's splits were 1st mile 10:30, 2nd 10:12, 3rd 9:01 Total 29:43

6:45 am. 4 miles on the fire break rd. Four tiny hours of sleep last night. I've always been kind of an insomniac but this week seems unusually sleepless. Todays run makes six days in a row, first time in my life I've done that. I feel really good. I plan to do it again next week starting on Sunday. I may cut back a little on my long run though. This is new territory for me and I want to be cautious.

I must say when I first started reading these blogs I was very skeptical of the six day a week theory...but after reading through the blogs for several weeks I began to see some of the advantages of training this way. Looking back on my logs for my previous three marathons ('95, '99' '03) I wonder how I even managed to finish those races. I see that I was trying to get by on as little training as possible, running three or four days, 25-35 miles a week...silly me. So I'm encouraged by my newfound training ethic, and motivated. Even though I'm 44 yrs old, I think that I can improve on my marathon PR (4:21) significantly in the Fall of '09.

Boy, we are a lucky bunch.

No run today. Lots of sleep.