January 7th

Scheduled Miles: None
Miles Ran: 6.5
Total Time: 0:45:08
Current Weight: 178
Current Condition: Sore as hell but happy about it

I felt bad about pussin' out on my long run yesterday, so I went out tonight even though I was supposed to be off to put in the rest of the work. And to be honest, I didn't consciously sherk my responsibility from the day before, I simply didn't have my training schedule with me at home - an oversight I rectified today. It not an excuse and thus I took it upon myself to make up the difference. Rest days will be vitally important later on, but at this point with relatively short runs each day it doesn't matter quite as much. I definitely don't want to overtrain because I know where that leads. However, it's imperative that I get the work in.

Tonight, I thought I might divulge a bit more recent history to help fill in the gaps. After the marathon I went nuts. For a solid week after I ate and drank anything and everything I wanted. It was my reward and I felt I had earned it. Needless to say I stayed stuffed and drunk for much of the week. Naturally, I couldn't just stop completely. I need to come down slow to avoid a massive hangover that had been waiting in the wings for a full week. I cut back on the drinking, but truthfully only slightly, and went back to my pre-training eating out habits the next week and for the rest of year.

The beauty of marathon training and running in general is that it pegs out your metabolism. For all the abuse I was putting my body though, I wasn't gaining back any weight because I had a supercharged fat burning machine watching my back.

My goal was to maintain a 20-25 mile a week average over the course of the "offseason" (defined loosely as Nov. and Dec.). Unfortunately, like many goals set without a truly defined motivating factor, I found it next to impossible to keep up. I let it slip, choosing to focus on speed training over distance. I need to run less than a 7 minute mile the entire marathon to go sub 3 and if you're not used that kind of pace it's going to feel fast. Over the course of a month I had pushed my pace to close to 6 minutes a mile over short distances (less than 5 miles).

I was disappointed that I wasn't keeping up with the distance stuff but the improvement in speed had me feeling pretty good about myself. That was until the week of Christmas. Something happened that week - maybe it was the laziness of a holiday without work (I was off for a week and half), maybe it was the mountains of food I was devouring, maybe it was the reservoir of alcohol I had made my personal mission to drain. Who knows. More than likely, it was a combination off all three but the end result was that my body threw a switch I didn't even know existed.

It was a switch that changes a man from an athlete to your average shlub. I started gaining weight, packing on eight pounds between the two holidays. It seemed my fat burning machine had sprung a cog or two. And when I went running during that week, I felt like total crap. I mostly blame the alcohol. It's impossible to hydrate when you're drinking every night. Wearing a permanently attached ten pound weight couldn't have helped either.

Should I have done more prep working leading up to yesterday? Of course. But I feel like I'm doing alright and might be pushing that switch back to the athlete side ever so slowly. Give me a week and I'll be back in the swing.