I am not a morning runner

I've been juggling my schedule all around to stick to my training program. If I had my choice I would run in the late afternoon all of the time. However, between ghastly weather (hot, humid, and thunderstorms), picking up kids from summer camp, travel, birthday parties and various other random things, I've had to take my workouts when I can get them. Yesterday I did my 7 mile run at 8:30am. On the plus side it was still relatively cool outside, much of the run was in the shade, and I was done with my exercise for the day before 10am. The bad part is that I am not a morning runner. To be more accurate, I'm not a morning person period. It was a very slow run - far slower than it should have been, even for being a long run. And to top it all off, there was major construction being done on one of the roads I use. It's part of a loop so when I realized that the "road closed" sign was serious (the entire road plus both sidewalks were being dug up by no less than 3 large bulldozers) I thought "No problem, I'll just reverse my loop and do as much as I can before I'm forced to turn around". Well, being that my brain wasn't working so well since a) I wasn't awake yet and b) most of the oxygen was being shuttled to my muscles rather than my brain there was a flaw in this plan that I didn't realize until too late. You see, this loop includes a rather sizable hill, a hill that I have no particular love for. With my adjusted route I ended up doing the stupid hill twice. {insert image of Karen pounding head on desk here} Unfortunately I don't see how I can avoid running in the morning, especially for the long ones. I guess the best I can hope for is that the construction finishes up soon.

I haven't got time for the pain (an ode to Carly Simon)

Sometime last week I woke up with what appeared to be a horribly pinched nerve in my right shoulder. It was pretty bad. It hurt to move my arm, shoulder, even my head to some degree. I tried stretching, rubbing, ibuprofen with little result. I figured I would just wait it out and it did get a little better each day. Sometimes it would feel a bit better after my run; I guess it loosened up due to all the bouncing up and down. Then yesterday morning I was awakened at 5am with the pain back in full force. I went and got a massage and went to bed not optimistic for today. I was pleasantly surprised when I slept quite well (something that's proven difficult these past few days) and woke up with the pain knocked down by several orders of magnitude. Unfortunately, as the day has worn on the pain is once again ramping up. I'll be heading out for my run soon so perhaps that will help. At the very least the pain in my shoulder should distract me from any twinges I might feel in my legs, right? I don't have time for this crap.

Day 1

Today was my first official day of training for the 2009 Philadelphia marathon.  I'd been feeling a bit nervous as I had slacked off on my mileage these past few months.  I spent some extra time on the pavement this past week just to prove to myself that 5-6 miles runs weren't going to be a serious problem so that helped.  Today it was a simple 40 minute run and, despite the fact that I had eaten too much pizza too late in the day, it went just fine.  I'm hopeful that these first few weeks won't be too taxing and that the familiarity of the routine will be there before too long.  It's 20 weeks until the race but I know that time will go by all to quickly and before you know it my long runs will be 16-18 miles.