Every Damn Hot Mile

As of today, I am 3 weeks away from race day! 3 WEEKS FROM RACE DAY!!!! When I decided to take this challenge on earlier this year I had forgotten how exhausting marathon training can be. I was so excited that I would be running my dream race that I underestimated how time-consuming this part of training can be. We have been pounding our bodies for the last 18 weeks and trust me when I say that they are taking a beating. This training has been the toughest for me physically where years past the mental aspect of training has always been my biggest challenge. With 3 weeks left, my new motto is "by any means necessary" . I am doing just about everything I can to make sure I go into race day the strongest I possibly can. I thought this post would center around all the things I do besides running to get me prepared physically for a run. This week was a good representative because I completed 18 miles yesterday. As I mentioned, this has been tough physically and I have been...

So not only is race day 1 month from tomorrow but it has also been over a month since my last post. As I sure most of you can imagine, training for a marathon is just exhausting, especially since we have gotten into the higher mileage. Since my last post, I have completed a 13 miler, 14 miler, 12 miler, another 14 miler and a 16 miler. I skipped last weekend's 16 miler because my leg/knee has been bothering me (will touch on that later in the post). That leaves me with 4 more weekend runs before the big day plus all the mid-week runs. This weekend - 13 miles - when I typed that out, I actually thought ONLY 13 miles. Something as simple as that truly shows me how far I have come in my training that I am thinking "ONLY" 13 miles when just a few short months ago running 3 miles was a struggle. Next weekend - 18 miles - this is "the run" that I have been eying for some time. Not only is this our longest mileage during training, but also serves as a great men...