"Only" 10 Miles

I never thought that I would have the word 'only' in any type of proximity to '10 miles!' Pretty amazing, huh?

As previously mentioned, we are tapering our mileage as the race day approaches. It is just two weeks away now. I felt as though I could have kept going, though I was happy to stop at 10. I was going to take an ice bath...well, the best laid plans. I was meeting my Tante H for lunch and wanted to take a quick snooze after my shower.

And boy, am I paying for it now. I should have taken that ice bath and forgone the nap. My legs are super sore.

So here is my latest training dilemma: I have been hearing a lot about Jeff Galloway's training program. I've read many of his articles and think that he has a very level-headed approach to training/running. He advocates the use of walk breaks:

Why do walk breaks work?
By using muscles in different ways from the beginning, your legs keep their bounce as they conserve resources. When a muscle group, such as your calf, is used continuously step by step, it fatigues relatively soon. The weak areas get overused and force you to slow down later or scream at you in pain afterward. By shifting back and forth between walking and running muscles, you distribute the workload among a variety of muscles, increasing your overall performance capacity. For veteran marathoners, this is often the difference between achieving a time goal or not.

Walk breaks will significantly speed up recovery because there is less damage to repair. The early walk breaks erase fatigue, and the later walk breaks will reduce or eliminate overuse muscle breakdown.

Why the dilemma? This is NOT the approach that Team-in-Training uses. So what to do? I actually think that walk breaks would help me achieve my goal in a more effective, more enjoyable, and safer fashion. But I'm not sure what my running buddies, with whom I have yet to discuss this, would say. With only two weeks left, I don't want to mess with what has been working up to this point.

Here is what I am thinking: I will run my race to the best of my ability, incorporating what I can from Galloway's book. After I have recovered from the marathon, I am going to start all over. That's right! I want to reapproach my running -- and have fun. I'll run another race when and if I am ready for it. Until then, I just want to enjoy running as a form of exercise and stress release. I know that if I don't enjoy it, I won't do it. And to complete a marathon and then ditch running...well, I don't think that I would feel very proud of that.

Shavua Tov!!