A bunch of ramblings...

Can you count the miles you run in your sleep?  No?  Dang.

I pulled another DNS on the scheduled morning run today (alarm goes off, think I'm going to die, roll over and go back to sleep).  I remembered doing this fairly recently and it was about a month ago (the benefits of the weekly recaps). I'm seeing patterns in my insomnia and that is good -- it seems to be cycle driven (damn hormones) but thankfully with a pattern I can plan around it all when I'm in full force marathon training.  The sleeping thing (or lack of sleeping thing) is still what scares me most about the marathon training.

But I have to say over all I feel very good at the 37 miles per week range -- was hoping to have a 40m/p/w week by end of year and maybe I'll make it next week as it isn't looking so good this week.  But overall I'm pleased with myself for actually getting out there and running (and realizing the more I run, the more my body expects to run and the grumpier I am on days where I don't) and I'm also pleased that my body is doing okay.  With running on average 22 m/p/w for a year and a half, I just wasn't sure what this old body would be up for dealing with -- but I think it likes running more and can handle even more so I feel like I'm in a very good spot to start training.

The other few running things that are making me happy are:

1.  A lot of my morning runs are FINALLY at an under 9m/m pace.  Or if the entire run isn't, the later miles are.  Whew.  

2.  Many of my runs are naturally turning into progression runs.  I like that.  I'm running a lot of the same distance runs and naturally starting to start slow and build speed as the run goes on.  Of course I start most of them still asleep so that might have something to do with it  However, since I'm doing a lot of the runs in the dark, I'm just doing this by feel vs relying on my garmin.  Surely this is a good thing?

3.  Oh oh oh -- take a look at this:

Split	Time	Distance	Avg Pace
Summary	52:39.0	6.01	8:46
1	9:18.2	1.00	9:18
2	9:17.5	1.00	9:17
3	8:55.1	1.00	8:55
4	8:38.9	1.00	8:38
5	8:32.5	1.00	8:32
6	7:54.3	1.00	7:54
7	:02.5	0.01	7:32

Notice mile 6 -- an under 8 mile!!!!!  Happy Dance as this was Sunday and mile 24 in three days.  Three months ago I could not have done this.  It felt so good too -- to just kind of blow off steam.

4.  Last Saturday -- mile 12 of 12 was also mile 1000 for the year.  I also managed NOT to get hit by a car during that mile though  it was close.  Can you even imagine how bad that would have sucked.

I'm a bit nervous about the race I decided to do on Monday -- I really want to just have it be a check of where I am so I don't have any big goals. But I do have a little mini goal -- finish with an official time of under 9m/m pace.  Apparently I like to run my half marathons longer than 13.1 miles (!!!) because the three I ran in the fall had a Garmin pace of less than 9m/m BUT the official pace was greater than 9m/m (and they were all well over 13.1 miles).  Anyhow so that is my only goal -- but, the race is gun time vs chip time so I'm not sure how that will all work out.  It is a super small race so I'll just get as close as I can to the front without being right up front and hope I'm not in anyone's way.  This is a flat race (maybe a 25ft climb right in the middle -- probably going over a freeway) so my strategy is to keep a 9m/m (or very low 9's) for first three miles and then just keep it under 9 after that -- gradually dropping pace.  As long as I don't go too far over 9 in the beginning, and assuming I can do this, it should get me my goal.  But I'm going to be tired after three nights not sleeping in my own bed (not that I actually sleep in my own bed half the time but still) and from all the Christmas festivities so we'll see how it all goes.

Enough fussing!

Happy Holidays!