Day 55 of 127 (Countdown to 1/17/10)

Today is a "recovery day" after the l o n g run... it was an amazing 15 mile run through the beautiful high desert and through portions of Tonto Natl Park. My running partner, Lindsay, and I took off around 7am. We were well equipped with lots of water and some gel for much needed energy so that we could "go the distance." It took us both a while to warm up and get in the zone... but, once that took place 3 miles in, we were good to go until we made it back to the starting point. We ran a couple of miles on pavement until we hit the dirt roads of the Rio Verde Foothills. It seems rather unbelievable that we have built on our training over the past 8 weeks to the point where we are running 15 miles. We celebrated our big run with a nice juicy hamburger & a beer at Greasewood Flats. No real pain or soreness that evening or today, I consider myself lucky and prepared. Off to bed, exhaustion has set in.

I hope your training is going well... Until next time - Kelly

p.s... enjoy the pics from our run!

Day 53 of 127 (Countdown to 1/17/2010)

My training is moving right along, I am in week 8 and almost half way through the full marathon training. I can tell you that training for a full marathon is definitely more time consuming than training for a half. That seems to be the biggest challenge is fitting in the training runs.

I missed my Wednesday 7 mile run and did it yesterday. So, today is my day of rest before the

l o n g run of 15 miles tomorrow. A running partner and I will run in the Arizona high desert for this long run and we will enjoy a good, cool and brisk run with great mountain views and saguaros abound.

I will check in tomorrow and let you know how the run went.... I hope you are all doing well and enjoying your training and more importantly... enjoying your LIFE! until next time - Kelly

Day 48 of 127 (Countdown to 1/17/10)

I am posting a day after this weeks l o n g run; yesterday was my longest run yet... 14 miles.
You know what? 14 miles is a l o n g run. I made it through with the support and company of one of my running partners and her friend who was in town.

This run came after a week of my missing 2 short training runs and having a longer run on Wednesday of about 7 miles in the wind and cold. I took a break because I was feeling some pain in my right hip and right knee and didn't want to push it to a place that I couldn't run my long runs. The experts all agree that the l o n g training run is soo important in your training to meet your goal of running the marathon. You need to get use to being on your feet running for such a long period of time and put yourself in the type of situations that may occur while you running the marathon.

I can't say that running 14 miles was easy, because it wasn't, but I was prepared and got through it and although the last 2 miles was REALLY HARD... we pushed through it and didn't stop. This was my longest run to date as the longest I had run previously was the 1/2 marathon distance of 13.1 miles. So, it was a milestone for me and the folks I was running with, it was their longest runs as well. We certainly have something to be proud of... our training has taken us to new distance and next weeks 15 mile long run will be "just a mile more" than what we have already run.

Today's Tune is BELIEVE by Rob Thomas: He sings "tell me how were gonna get that far, tell me how were gonna get that far. Wait, I don't think we can make it in the world without some faith... we must BELIEVE, we must BELIEVE." I said these words out loud while I was listening to them yesterday during our run and is now my new running mantra. Believe is a bonus track on Rob Thomas' Cradlesong Album, if you download it on iTunes you can hear how great it really is. The whole album is super.

Until next time - Kelly