She smiles like she's so tough

When I returned from Tennessee, I kept up the daily runs.  Almost without thinking about it.  It was the day of my first kickball game (two weeks ago) that I realized how much I'd kept up with them.  I arrived at kickball a little early, and decided to go on a short run to kill the time.  Maybe 2 miles was what I fit in.  After that, I put it together that I had run 9 of the last 10 days.  Have I mentioned it feels really good to be back!

I've made a new training schedule for myself.  Written it out on a calendar.  It combines three different schedules, the first 8 weeks are a slightly modified method for getting faster for a 10K, the next 16 weeks are a slightly modified half marathon training schedule (modified only to increase the distance enough to be into a full marathon training schedule in time) and the last 8 weeks are the full marathon training.  What I like about this schedule is the abundance of time. This is really giving me about 22 weeks to train for a full marathon, after some speed work. My long runs before the half hit up to 15 or 16 miles I think.  I'm excited to exceed race distance, and make that half marathon seem like an easy day!  My normal training schedules set up race day to be a huge reach, this seems like maybe the pressure will be off.  It also seems like there's some flexibility for missed runs, missed distances, and just the little hiccups that we all know affect me much more than some other runners we know.

The basic layout of the schedule is pretty easy to follow too. For the first bit it looks like this:
Monday  - Cross-train day, right now I've been doing boot camp at the gym and loving it
Tuesday - speed day, and I've been heading to the work treadmill for that
Wednesday - start with early morning yoga (a well needed stretch after Tuesday speed), followed by a pretty easy low mileage day later on
Thursday - tempo run
Friday - OFF (yippee)
Saturday - long run
Sunday - easy slow 30 minute recovery run

Things switch up a bit when the "speed" work is done, and I move more into tackling distances.  Then the easy low mileage run shifts to Tuesday, the tempo run is Wednesday, and Thursday is another low mileage easy run.  At this point too, the long runs start getting into the distances that have begun to scare me again.  I'm good under 7.  10, eeeek!

I've stuck to it pretty well so far. With a wee hiccup last weekend.

During my speed workout this week, this song came into my play list.  I remember the first time this song resonated with me back when I was living in Boston.  Mostly because of some drama going on with friends at work and how I actually wanted to show up hiding under a paper bag.  I feel like that sometimes, but this song reminds me that actually, I'm pretty strong.  I don't need to hide, I boxed my shadow and won!
(this video isn't the greatest, but apparently there is no video for the song, and it was the most not terrible)