I did a second 20-mile run a week ago, and it went much better than the last one. I did get tired, but I ran negative splits (my late miles were faster than the early ones), and my last mile was the fastest of all. I needed this run very much to boost my confidence (as well as for physical endurance training).

Last week we took a little 3-day trip to the mountains of South Carolina. I still managed to get almost all my miles in. (Except for the last 2 miles of a 6-miler one night on a treadmill in the hotel - that was Thanksgiving night, and my gastrointestinal tract didn't like running after the feast.) It has still been a hard week with 39 miles total, and up until the long run it was one of the hardest weeks of training. The long run, yesterday, was only 15 miles, and it felt really easy. I had to hold myself back and constantly remind myself that I shouldn't exhaust myself in training. I have to start to save for the marathon, which is in two weeks.

The race reports from Runner's World's Marathon challengers have started to flow in after weekend's Richmond Marathon. [here]
To tell the truth, it is quite a bit scary, that many, if not most of these people, who used the same training program as I, crashed and burned in the marathon, and ran much slower races than they wanted to. OK, the journalists of Runner's World were fine, maybe even great, but I'm talking about the individuals, who bought into the training program (see the "Comments" section). AFAIK they used the same plan that was published in the magazine, and they received all kinds of additional benefits.

Am I going to be OK?...

To add to my fears, my left shin is not perfect. It doesn't hurt as much as it used to, when I skipped those 5 days of training, but it does hurt a bit when I start to run, for the first 6 miles or so. When the run is less then 6 miles (like yesterday, 5 miles), it hurts all way. But I can't afford to skip more training, especially, because it doesn't seem to cure my shin splint. I just suck it up and train on it.

Have I become a maniac? Last night I did my mile repeats at the university track in POURING HEAVY RAIN. The water from above wouldn't affect me that much, but it was less pleasant to run in occasionally ankle deep cold water - and I had to run some relatively fast laps (1:49/400 meters), and a lot of them! (16 fast laps and 20 slower ones - 2:15/400 meters). I was circling the track in the dark, in the rain, for one hour and fourteen minutes.

Fortunately my left shin seems to be holding up. Nevertheless, I won't play with fire and I'll keep myself to the 10% decrease in mileage I decided a few days ago.

I retired my Asics shoes after last night's run. I was a worthy last training for them. It's time to pull out my Adidas pair that I bought months ago in a sale!

The thing that most runners fear the most: injury. I had a sore set of muscles in my left shin, close to my knee, that didn't go away from one run to the other. It usually got better during the run, disappearing at around the third mile, and then later, at around the sixth mile. Then I ran 7 miles last Tuesday, and the pain stayed with me for the whole run, and it got to point that I couldn't maintain correct form at the beginning, because of the severe pain.

I had a rest day on Wednesday, but the pain didn't really seem to get better by Thursday, so I reluctantly admitted that I was injured. I skipped the rest of last week, finishing the week with an appalling 11 miles.

Man, did it feel great to run 6 miles this morning! I got up at 5am, so I could finish my hour long run before my daughter was about to go to school at 7am. I hate to get up early, but now I feel like the drug addict who got his fix.

I decided to make some changes in the training plan. I keep the paces, but I reduced the length of each run by about 10%. This way I will peak at about 45 miles, which is not much more than last healthy week (43 miles). I only have two weeks of hard training left before the taper sets in, and I will do it with virtually no increase in mileage. My longest run will be another 20-miler, instead of 22. I did a 20 mile run last weekend, during which I got dehydrated, and it was *miserable*. (I suffered for the last 5 miles and I had to walk a good portion at the end. It may have contributed to my injury.)

It is clear that I have to forget about any goal less than 4 hours. I'll just shoot for 4 hours. In fact, now I see that I probably started marathon training a little early. I would have largely benefited from building a more solid base in fall, and then prepare for a spring, and even a 2010 fall marathon. But that's too late, I'm running Kiawah in a month, and I'm not backing off now. Most of the training is already in.

After that I already have a plan of running the "Save the Light 5K" in February, and I will try to win my age group with a time less than 21 minutes. After that I'll spend some more time on 5K races, trying to get under 20 minutes eventually, and then, I will get back to longer distances.