I have been quite for several months as is normal for me when things are not going the way I want them to. I have 4 marathons down, one of them I was very happy about, one was okay and two were brutal. The good one was in January, it is so far away that it seems like a couple years ago.
Now I am getting ready for another next weekend in Hurley, Wisconsin, the 44th running of the Paavo Nurmi Marathon. I have not trained very well but I expect to run easy, walk when I feel like it and finish in the 4th hour. If everything goes well I will finish in 3:45 but I don't expect to keep that pace for 26 miles.
I have found it hard to train, increase my fitness capacity when I am recovering from injury, recovering from a marathon or tapering for the next marathon. So I am starting to train more like the fellow I met along the way in the Med City Marathon in Rochester. He was a young guy, late 20's - early 30s, and was wearing a 50 Marathons in 50 States shirt. I struck up a conversation with him and he shared with me that he was from Minneapolis and was about to finish his first round of 50 states challenge. He had run 90 events or so and 27 last year.
I did the quick math and he was doing more than 2 marathons a month. I thought I was crazy doing 1 a month. I asked him what kind of training he did between events and he said, "whatever I feel like doing. If I don't want to run I don't. If I want to run 3 miles, that is what I do. If I want to do 6 that is what I do."
That has helped me cope with getting ready for the next event without worrying about how much I am able to increase my fitness. That being said, it has also helped me lower the expectations for how I will feel on marathon day and how fast I will finish.
That is about all I have to say about that...
