Naked Friday Night

Whether by accident or out of sheer laziness, there are days where I just don't feel like putting on clothes after I shower. Today was one of those days. I did a slow 6 miler at the gym and then stood in the shower for a good ten minutes longer than I needed to for the sole purpose of delaying putting on clothing and walking out into the freezing cold. 

Which brings me to a (running) connundrum: if I find it difficult to go outside, let alone run, what the heck am I doing training for a marathon (my FIRST marathon) in the coldest four months of the year.  I guess it will make me a stronger runner and hopefully (barring injury) I'll be able to complete 5 mars this year.

Anyway, as I said, I did a slow 6 miles today on the treadmill. I haven't "officially" started following my racing training schedule, but I figured I should at least try to up my mileage, which will be the most important part.  I felt good after the run and surprisingly not very sweaty. I was running at a 10 minute mile pace, but compared to where I was this past winter when I started running, running 6 miles at a 10 minute mile and not even feeling terribly sweaty/fatigued is something I never thought I'd be able to say.

Cross-training tomorrow, hiking in Connecticut on Sunday, and then official race training starts Monday. I think this weekend, if I have time, I'm going to plan out my year of marathons and see if I can space them out well enough that I get a good variety of runs around the country (and perhaps even internationally) and also a decent amount of rest time in between each. I feel like if the guy who wrote the marathon book that I'm reading can run 50 marathons in 50 weeks, I can run 5 a year.

Make you a deal: you keep reading, I'll keep running.