After running my last marathon this past November, I claimed to go into retirement from running marathons. As most of you guessed, my "retirement" was short lived, as I have now pretty much decided to run this year's Akron Marathon. It will be my 5th marathon, and 2nd time around in Akron (it was my very first marathon, back in 2005). I just finished my 7th week of training (of a 16 week program) with a 16 mile run this past Sunday. And I ran over 100 miles in July for just my second 100+ mile month ever.

Originally I had planned on focusing on improving my speed in shorter distances and eventually build up to another marathon in a few years, once I felt I could really improve on my past times. But in the back of my head, I could never shake the desire to train for another marathon right away. It would be like for a climber to climb Mt. Everest and then try to go back to doing smaller mountains again. It's just not the same. Unfortunately, I don't honestly know if I'll be able to beat my best time. It's a challenging, semi-hilly course, and most of the other marathons I've run were rather flat in comparison. Also, I've run 2 races this year in which I failed to beat my times from the previous year, but also I had 2 races where I did beat my times from the previous year. So who knows what will happen come September 29th. I do know I'm looking forward to another pre-race dinner at Luigi's!

Labels: akron marathon