Hell Yeah Mellow March

So like I mentioned before, in the days immediately following NVM, I had all these grand plans about getting back to srsbzns training sooner rather than later, because what is a non-race pace marathon besides a glorified long run?

Of course I quickly accepted that, DERP, clearly according to my body, a marathon is still a marathon, even if you don't attempt to actively blow the doors off the thing.

So my March weekly mileage has looked like this:

• Week 1: 0 miles
• Week 2: 23 miles
• Week 3: 15 miles
• Week 4: 16 miles

In some cases I would have run more had I not been traveling for work or out of town for the weekend, but since my body has been *quite* clearly communicating sentiments along the lines of "Six miles is plenty at once, plzthnx" and "Maybe not so much with the two days in a row for now," that's actually kind of been good timing.

Other things I have been doing shall we say less-than-much of include 1) eating like any kind of remotely serious athlete and 2) strength work. I did have a session with AT this month (where we worked on deadlifts, HELL YEAH DEADLIFTS) but other than that I've been to the gym maybe 4-5 times. Probably 4. (Though I would be remiss if I didn't mention that on one of those visits, I straight-up DEADLIFTED MY BODY WEIGHT for the first time since probably high school. And since I definitely weigh more now than then, deadlift PR FTW.)

It was pretty much like this.

But otherwise I have been mostly embracing Matt Fitzgerald's very reasonable-sounding philosophy that no one can eat like a serious athlete 100% of the time (not even serious athletes) & that, much like having a relaxed recovery period after a training cycle, letting yourself have a bit of time where you eat more or less whatever you want, whenever you want (and knowing you'll let yourself do that for a while after a goal race) can help give you the resolve you need to eat well when you're in the middle of training for something you seriously care about.

Seriously all the Trader Joe's snack dips.

I'd originally planned to start some easy hill workouts in the last week or two of March, but with "easy" runs still not quite feeling easy enough yet for my taste, I decided to push it off until April, which seemed to make a lot of sense given that we'll be in Colorado skiing (or hiking, or maybe swimming?? Only the weather will tell) this weekend.

But after that, it is ON.

Hill sprints, get your game face on, because I am coming for you on April 7.

(Er....assuming I don't break myself skiing. :-/ )