Adventure Running

This season of running has been interesting for me. For the first time ever, I decided to run with a carrying case for some Gatorade instead of stashing it somewhere along my route. I've been running with less planning, which has meant having to occasionally do some long laps (6 mile loops) or just running based on my time. A contributing factor has just been not knowing where good places to run 20 miles are by my houses so then I just kind of pick a far away point and try and run to it. And I have to admit, it's been really nice.

I've been stressing less over where and the length of distance that I'm running for, and that's resulted in just taking in scenery in and concentrate on making the distance on my long runs. If I'm feeling good, then I'll just go ahead and try and reach a farther point. It's been really nice. The results have been good, mostly in the fact that I haven't missed any of my long runs.

For previous marathons, there have been at least a couple weeks that I'll really scale back on and I'll cut out a few long runs. Although I have cut out some of my shorter ones, I haven't missed anything long, even if that has meant running on a weeknight or in middle of the day when it's been probably too warm to go out running for a couple of hours.

All of this means that I'm on pace for hitting all of my runs, even a little ahead of schedule, for the Deseret News next month. I shifted to a different training schedule which required jumping up in mileage for several consecutive weeks, but the payoff is that I've already got a 20-miler under my belt (last week), and I have seven weeks to get a few more in.

Elisha (Amy's sister-in-law, so I guess we're in-law-in-laws, or simply...family), a real runner, was asking me last night if I've trained at all for speed. No. Only in the most basic forms. Sometimes I'll push the pace on a short run or through in some more hills, but I don't do anything like track times or run real intervals.

I think for this marathon I'm just using it to get into shape and I'm halfway considering picking up another one sometime in September or October, and maybe seeing if I can pick up some more speed in one of those ones. I dunno.

The world is my oyster right now and I've been having more fun training for this marathon than I have for any of the others. I dare say, this is actually something that is getting pretty easy to do, and I might even make a real, whole-hearted attempt to improve my times. We'll see.

And that's what you get.