27 miles this week, and preparing for the long run!

As in, THE long run. The Cleveland Marathon is now 183 days away. Took a couple steps in preparing today. I'll get to those in a minute. But first...

This week marks a new record in weekly miles, 27! Old record was 25. I actually did two long runs this week -- did 11 Monday to make up for a miserable day Saturday, and 10 today. Of course, my short runs were very short, I did 2 miles of hill repeats on Tuesday, normally I do three, and Thursday was an easy four miles on the treadmill.

The old record was 25. Here's the graph:

Today's run was wonderful. I ran the bike trail but took a different route. I started at the Y and ran five miles out, all the way to the cow pasture. I was off today and I have a feeling this was one of the last times I'll be running in the sunlight for awhile. It went well, nothing hurt and I'm not really sore now. Just tired.

Then I went to Columbus. Fleet Feet put a note up on Facebook that there was a new model of my shoe out, the Asics Kayano, so they were closing the one I have out for wicked cheap. Of course when I got there they were already out of my size! But I'll poke around online and try to order a couple pairs, I'm sure it's out there.

Jacket logo

Fleet Feet Columbus runs the Marathoner in Training, MIT, program, so I talked to the guy there for awhile about it. I'm so excited, he said the program grows by about 30 percent each year and about 600 people turn out for the Saturday long runs. They pace you too, with pace groups for every half minute mile. With a goal simply to finish, I'll probably be in the 10 or 10:30 pace group.

I plucked an Asics MIT jacket off the clearance rack. It's really nice. And I got a bunch of different hydration nutrition products to try out. I used Gu Chomps for the first time Monday. They weren't gross and I got through my run without dying, so I guess they were effective? Hard to tell. I'm kind of afraid of the gel packs.

Here's a photo of the loot.

There won't be any running this weekend :( Tomorrow is going to be insane, I have to go to a workshop in Cincinnati then head up to Cleveland. Sunday I'm driving up to Maine for a week of R&R. Hopefully there will be some nice runs up there!

Got a few more posts to get up soon! For now, time to pack.