Spring marathon training

If there is one thing this holiday break has taught me, it's that I need to stop judging gold diggers, people who mooch off their parents their whole adult lives, or anyone else who has somehow finagled it so they have no job/responsibilities, because not working is the best thing ever. There are so many wonderful aspects, but I think that my favorite is waking up.

Normal workday: Alarm goes off, it's pitch black outside, I shake my phone trying to figure out how it broke and is ringing the alarm 3 minutes after I fell asleep, finally figure out that it's actually morning, fight off sobs, and use every ounce of willpower I have to get out of bed.

Vacation: Roll around in bed, waking up and going back to sleep numerous times as I see fit, not removing my eye mask until I am truly good and ready, and even then staying in bed to check my email, Facebook, reading on my kindle, etc. When I do get up its not at all painful because all I have to do is fill a cup of coffee and head to the couch.

I have a bad feeling that the day of which we will not speak when I return to work will be a pretty rude awakening. I think today was maybe the second time I actually got out bed prior to 10am all week, and it was at 9:55.

I've loved sleep so much that I've even been skipping breakfast and just going straight to lunch.  I'm morally opposed to skipping any meal but sleep is an acceptable reason. Plus I've been having a third meal full of Christmas desserts around 10 or 11 pm each night, so it all balances out.

I swore I was on break from any training until 2013, but I sort of started training for my spring marathon two days early. I started thinking about the timing on a run last week and realized there are only 11 weeks until the race. When you factor in tapering and the fact that I hadn't run more than 9 miles at a time since JFK, that's not much time. I texted Kari (she'll be virtually training with me) and she said the long run that week was only 14 miles, so I figured I could at least do that.

I just ran 50 miles less than two months ago, so 14 miles should be a breeze, right? Uh, not so much. The distance seemed terrifyingly long. I wanted to do it Saturday, but I chickened out using pathetic excuses - I was dehydrated from the road trip the day before, it was snowing, I suck at life, etc. I managed 7 miles at an 8:57 pace and felt great, and almost did another 7, but then I was like "nah".

Sunday I finally manned up and faced 25 + mph winds to get it done. My genius plan of staying in bed forever and eating breakfast at noon (it was oatmeal, therefore breakfast) meant my lunch was this:

I made it extra delicious by starting the pack months ago and putting the rest in a plastic bag and waiting until they were nice and stale to finish them. Even fresh, these are not good, nor are they easy to eat while running,  but they were free from some race, and you can't go wrong with free.

I ended up doing the 14 miles at an average pace of 9:30, which I felt good about, since when the wind gusted I'm pretty sure I was running in place. That put me at 35 miles for the week. I ran 0 miles the week after Christmas last year due to bronchitis (I know I keep mentioning that but it was quite traumatic) so I'm pretending that's an improvement.

This afternoon I finished out the year with 8 miles at a 9:04 pace. In 2012 I ran 1847 miles - so (relatively) close to 2000 ! I also cycled 1005 miles, which really surprised me, I didn't expect it would have been that many.

Happy New Year!