I'm In!

Yours Truly was selected in the lottery for the New York City marathon! This will be my 6th marathon and it's one I've had my eye on. Although I was raised in California and consider myself to be a Californian, I was born in the Bronx and figured I should run New York sometime. It will be interesting to run through all five boroughs. I haven't step foot in the Bronx since I was a teenager in 1969, when I went back to visit the "old neighborhood." It looked like a war zone and scared the crap out of me and my visits to NYC since then consisted solely of Manhattan. I never had the courage to venture beyond there.

When I was in Minneapolis last October, I asked my running buddies what fall marathon were we going to do--New York or Chicago. The answer was unanimous: New York. Some of my running friends here in SLO also wanted to do New York; of the four that entered, only two got picked. One woman who didn't get picked is looking for a charity to sign up with. I didn't want to do any fund raising, although I'm sure I'll be envious when she gets to be inside the tent before the race.

But before I can think about that marathon, I need to get through Seattle. I thought I had one more training week than I actually do, so I'm trying to cram. Yes I know you can't cram for a marathon. I was planning to run 18 miles on Tuesday and then 20 miles the following week, but that only gives me ten days to recover before the marathon. I think that's cutting it too close, so I'm going to try to do my 20 miler this Tuesday instead. I ran 16 hilly miles this week for my long run, and so far have logged 36 miles.

I was reading an athlete's article on what he learned from his last marathon, which was Boston. He said he would have trained on more downhills, so today I ran 7 miles of hills. There is a 6% grade near my house that goes for 5 miles. I couldn't bring myself to run uphill for 2.5 miles, so I did a few out and backs--uphill for one mile, downhill for two miles, back uphill for one mile, then downhill for 1.5 miles and back uphill for the final 1.5. It wasn't as difficult as I expected. I took walking breaks every 9 minutes and ran strong.

Tomorrow some of us are going on a 20 mile bike ride and then a 3 mile run, so that will bring my mileage up to 39 for the week. I've never run after a bike ride but I hear it's difficult. I'm hoping it won't be too bad since we're only riding for 20 miles.

I've already told you about Irene's San Diego race, but kudo's also to Sunshine for finishing the Inaugural Minneapolis half-marathon with a pain level of 9 on a scale of 10 and to Shirley-Perly for placing second in her AG at the Rock n Roll half-Ironman. She got the coolest trophy--a replica of Jimi Hendrix's guitar!