What I've Been Up To

So what have I been up to lately? I haven't been blogging but I have been running. Quite a bit.

Here are some of the highlights from the last six weeks (this is just a quick-hit post, I'll come back and post about each in detail separately at some point):

* I ran the LA Marathon. On March 17 I completed my ninth marathon. I finished in 4:44:15. It's not a great time and I faded badly down the stretch but I finished. I think what I will be most proud of will be pacing a first-timer to his first marathon finish and a second-timer to his second-marathon finish. I loved the experience though. I enjoyed LA immensely in 2012 and the experience was the same this year, despite me fading down the stretch.

* On March 30 I ran my first trail half marathon. Oh yeah, this was hard. Super hard. In terms of level of difficulty, none of the other half marathons comes anywhere near how tough this was. The race was small, like 25 runners small, and the course was a four-mile loop which we did three times, then a mile out-and-back to complete the distance. The first loop was tough but it just got progressively more difficult. My legs were dead the rest of the day.

* On Sunday I ran the Run Through Redlands half marathon. I was a little disappointed in my finish time of 2:03. I was gunning for a sub-2 and really wasn't that close to the time. Sigh. Just a few years ago I blazed through the course in a time of 1:56:58. Oh well. There's always next year.

* As I mentioned on Monday, I ran a solo 20-miler. Oh my goodness this was tough. I ran this on April 15 when the horrible events at the Boston Marathon took place. I didn't find out about that until I was done with my run. I was pretty shaken up the rest of the day, because of what happened over there and because of how I felt physically.

* I have the OC Marathon coming up in two weeks. Actually less than that. And actually actually, I'm not sure if I'm running the full. I mean, I registered for the full but I don't know. I will have to seriously think about what my options are for that race. Not to get too much into my next blog post but I have two options - run the full, go through with it, get my 10th marathon medal but prepare myself to run a slower marathon or - drop down to the half, see it not as a setback or an opportunity lost but a chance to test myself at the half marathon distance once more and help me stay mentallly fresh for the San Francisco Marathon. Ugh. Tough choice!

Anyway, that's a small sampling of what has transpired during my quiet period.