Six Days to Go

Six days remain until the Philadelphia Marathon. I ran 4 miles on the treadmill at lunch today, the shortest distance I’ve run since 2007. For some odd reason I’ve also dropped 5 pounds in the last few weeks. This is encouraging, although seemingly without reason. I gained that same five pounds over the course of the last six months as I increased my mileage and concurrently, my eating. Perhaps the last three weeks of decreased mileage also decreased my appetite or something. Whatever, I’m not going to worry about it.

My plan for after the race is to decrease mileage to 20 or 25 a week and see if I get back to my fighting weight of 178 which is where I was before I started racking up the miles. I also think I want to spend more time in the gym this winter, working on strength training with an eye towards trying some triathlons. I love running but I think I’m a little burnt from this training cycle.

I have an addictive personality, which is great for training routines that require high mileage. Unfortunately I also tend to push myself pretty hard towards the outer limits of my physical abilities, and end up overtraining. One this race is over I can go back to being a normal neurotic runner and leave the high mileage to the young kids.