I RAN 13 MILES TODAY!

I’ve been blog­ging about train­ing for the Philadel­phia Marathon on three dif­fer­ent plat­forms (first Tum­blr, then Pos­ter­ous, then final­ly Dai­ly Mile. For the record, I liked Pos­ter­ous best.) I’m decid­ing right now to go the Lizzyville route and make my progress a part of this blog going for­ward. Sound good? Good.

The last two weeks have been inter­est­ing. I’ve been run­ning for nine weeks. As I’ve men­tioned before, I’m fol­low­ing Hal Hig­don’s inter­me­di­ate two sched­ule. It’s gone well so far, even if I’m intim­i­dat­ed by some of these dis­tances. Last week, I was hob­bled by shin splints and gen­er­al stiff­ness. This week was a 180 degree turn­around and I have no idea why. Weird, right?

I don’t know what was dif­fer­ent between this week and last, but I hope I can keep run­ning like I did this week­end. We spent the entire week­end at the Jer­sey shore, cel­e­brat­ing Helen’s 30th birth­day at our friends Suzanne and Frank’s house in Atlantic City. It was a great time, punc­tu­at­ed by two runs totalling 19 miles: six on Sat­ur­day and 13 this morn­ing. Both were com­fort­able and quick.

This morn­ing’s run was great. Rob and I hit the boards at just about 6 a.m. and ran two miles and change to the Vent­nor end before turn­ing around and run­ning all the way to the top, past the casi­nos on some of the rick­eti­est board­walk I’ve ever set foot on. But we weren’t fin­ished there. We turned around and ran all the way back down to the Vent­nor end before mak­ing one last turn to fin­ish the last mile and a half. It took just under two hours and was a per­son­al best dis­tance for both Rob and me. I nev­er thought a 13 mile run would feel so good!

Now I’m real­ly excit­ed to run the Philadel­phia Dis­tance run. Today’s run told me that I’ll be ready for it!