For those of you who have been following my progress as I train for a marathon may have noticed the real scarcity of posts concerning this training. Truth is that my life has been way too hectic and I have not been able to do the required training. The long runs on Sundays were next to impossible to get in - it was not fair to my wife and kids, who I don’t see much during the week due to work anyway - to head out for 2.5+ hour runs. The volume of the weekday runs were equally hard. Don’t get me wrong, my wife is the most supportive wife in the world - it was my guilt that was the issue.

This lead me to making a pretty tough decision - I have decided to pull out of the full marathon and have re-registered in the half-marathon. The funny thing is that it feels like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders. I was constantly stressing about being ready for the marathon and not getting the good quality runs is was have an impact on my well-being. I am a pretty passionate guy and things like this affect me greatly. I now feel revitalized and am enjoying running again as the runs are manageable. As I wrote about awhile ago, I have been incorporating my runs and cross-training into my regular daily activity of commuting to work and it is working. The biking has given me much stronger legs and my running speed is improving. I have also been following the training methodology presented in the book, Run Less, Run Faster, which has me running 3 days a week as well as cross-training another 2. This fits nicely in my schedule. I encourage you to check it out if you are looking for a different way to train.

Days to Half-Marathon: 20