4.23

That is the amount of miles I ran out of my 7 mile goal yesterday.

4.23

I decided at that point to stop.  I hit a wall and could have gone on, but I did that Sunday and decided that I would be opening myself up to injury if I continued.  However this does pose a dilemma.  How do I get to 50 miles this week and ultimately the mileage to seriously run a marathon if I can’t do much more than 4 miles in a day?

I know it has some to do with the heat – probably 80% of what I felt running yesterday was due to the heat.  Part of it was due to a late meeting that meant that I didn’t get out to run until after 4:00 in the afternoon.

I’ve been thinking that perhaps I should run in the morning.  However I already get up by 4:00 each morning so that isn’t very doable.

So TJ helped me with telling me his solution.  He had to stop early also yesterday, though for him early is 10 miles.  His solution is to try running some miles in the morning and the rest in the afternoon.  Sounds like a doable solution to me.

So starting today I am going to try to run 3 miles in the morning and 4 in the afternoon.  That way it will be much less time in the 100+ heat and it won’t seem like such a long run either.  Of course, now I have to get up no later than 3:30 and probably earlier as I have to cool down and soak my achilles in ice water after my run.  However I will give this a try and see how it goes.

Tonight, Spirit of the Marathon II at 7:00.  One night only.  I can’t wait – though 3:30 will come awful early after staying up until 10:00.

Maybe I’ll take tomorrow off.