Now I can see it! Looking great.

just drinking some tea waiting for the sun to rise (and the coffee shop to open) for my run.

Happy - Congrats on the first marathon!  Sounds like you are not as proud as you should be about that performance.  You can run as many miles in training as you want but the first marathon will always feel different than training.  You did fantastic and really made a veteran decision at the end and slowed it down a little to prevent an injury.

Russ - Another impressive performance with that double.  I just did my first 200 mile relay and I had a similar thought about two runs spread out being mentally tougher than 1 long run.  Nice work!

I'm stuck in the middle of my outage at work.  6 twelve hour days, then 1 day off.  Tough to get the runs in like that.  I broke out the headlight and blinky vest last night and got a couple of miles in after work.

Hey Jeff - I do need to get a better perspective on it. Thanks for your helpful  comments.

I've decided the "mental" part of running a marathon is how you process it afterwards.

There's so much hype about the event, expectation of what the day will be like, and putting training to the test....

and then there's how you feel on the day, how your body performs in the race, and how you feel about that.

Maybe I'm just talking about me here.

 

Anyhoo... I'm happy with how I did. It was 4 more miles than I ever ran before and the extra distance was not the challenging part which is a very satisfying feeling. I agree with you I think I made a good decision to slow down for the quad pain and finish well.  I never even expected to be able to train for and  run a marathon, so it's an achievement that means a lot to me. For some reason though the race just didn't give me the same high as some of my training runs did.

 

post - or erase - post - or erase - post - or erase - oh just post it!

Well said Jeff and Happy

I enjoyed the photos, Puke. Thanks for posting them. You sure had a beautiful sunny day for the kiltathon - must be having a nice summer? I can't recall if it gets really hot there or not....?

I threw four quarter-mile intervals into my 8-miler last night to see how that felt. I'm doing a Turkey Trot 5K in a couple weeks (Nov 16) to see where I'm at. So I think I should start practicing running a bit quicker before then. Now if I could just string those intervals into a complete mile....some day it will happen.

Well I took the day off work since DH is off today too. If I can get my lazy @$$ in gear, we're going on a short hike (about 2 hours RT) to a river. I'll post pics if any turn out.

Impressive string of marathons, Russ. A break from traveling will probably feel good too.

Here's pics from this afternoon's hike. All the fall color is pretty much underfoot and the sky was overcast with a bit of fog; so it seemed very muted. Saw what was probably a dog's paw print along with a boot print in the mud several times along the way. Since there are cougar in the area...I wondered,,,, but finally decided it was either a dog print ... or the cat was no longer hungry.   When I got home, I printed out a tutorial on paw prints to take on the next hike.  

Dang, Puke, you're making me nostalgic for NZ with those pics.

Is Paul still planning to have a 100 mile Tarawera?

Yep, 100m still on the cards, part of the track we ran is supposed to be part of it, sounds like he still has issues with permission from private land owners etc