The run must go on...

In my previous post, I retraced my marathon running history which started in 1998. Back then, I religiously followed the advice of my best doctor, my sister Marie: "no more than 2 marathons a year, tapering before a race and at least a week without running afterward to rest and recover." For sure, Kenyans and Ethiopians have figured out that they can't race more than once or twice a year if they want to win the extremely competitive and very remunerative top international marathons. Fortunately for me, I call running my second job and I've a great primary job to pay the bills (and send the kids to the best schools in the US...).

Over the last 16 years, I've increased my racing and mileage a lot, now up to 18 races a year, including 12 to 14 ultra events, and log about 3,100 miles a year. I still taper for a few days before the big races but barely take a day off afterwards. This week, after the Marine Corps Marathon (MCM) on Sunday, I ran a "recovery" half-marathon on Monday, 15K on Tuesday and Wednesday and 11 miles on Thursday. I skipped Friday because of work, and ran 25K on Saturday and 16.6 miles this Sunday for a 75-mile post-marathon week.

Getting started on Monday was quite painful for my tired legs but I was so excited to be back on the W&OD (Washington & Old Dominion) Trail, on a section which has been resurfaced last week, that I quickly found myself running at 7 min/mile, the average pace of all my other runs this week. And I'll get back to the track this week for some speed work as I need to get back to sub 6 min-miles before the Turkey Trot 10K in 3 weeks. You are never too fast on these "short" distances... ;-)

This weekend, I was motivated to go out after checking on a few of my friends running either Javelina Jundred (100 miles) or the New York City Marathon. Hearing about the gusting winds and cold temperatures made me appreciate even more the almost perfect conditions we had at MCM last week! Conversely, occurring in the Arizona desert, JJ was really hot according to reports on Facebook.

By the way, we got some good rain in California on Friday and Saturday, at last! Even some snow on the Sierras. Unfortunately, that didn't last much, the sky was back to clear blue and sunny today... We need much more!

In all sorts of weather, the run must go on...!