So What's Next?

OMG, get me away from dairy.  I've been really good at cutting it out before the marathon, but now that it's over....the floodgates have opened!  Cheese this, dairy that...gah!  It's soooo bad for me but it tastes sooo good....but I've got to stop because I've been noticing I've been feeling extremely tired and not that great.  I've been letting myself have treats here and there for post-marathon week, but after this I'm back on good eating again. 

I think I've created a monster.  My legs are feeling much, much better now...the first few days were torturous, but pretty much all the soreness is gone now but there are a few pangs and twinges remaining that tell me that things still are healing, and I should take 'er easy.  I was saying to Hubs that I was going to a very short run on Saturday, maybe 3K or so just to get things moving again as I'm feeling itchy to start running.  So thinking that he would do the same because like I've said before, he doesn't really love to run...he says well he's going to go out for a 10K run instead.  Wha?!  Who are you and what have you done with my husband?  Ha!  It's awesome...he's bound and determined this time to keep up with longer distances to maintain his current level of fitness.  Eeeeexcelllllent.

So...the big question is, what are we going to do now that the marathon training is over?  Definitely for the next few months I'll be taking a break from any kind of race training, and will just run because...well, I love to run.  I'm going back to bootcamps and other cross training, and am toying with the idea of doing a weight lifting program for the balance of the year to get my strength back up again.  I saw my race photos and wasn't happy with how shapeless my spaghetti arms were.  As for running plans...Hubs and I have decided that we're going to increase our weekend runs to around the 15K-ish range, just so the transition to any kind of longer distances won't be quite so painful in the new year.  We've also decided that 2012 will be the year of speed ..we've built our distance bases, so now is the time to get our pace up and our times down!  I've also been looking into races for next year, and we're going to take a running clinic called Mindful Strides that one of the speakers at the Race Expo spoke about.  The clinic leader is named Marilyn Arsenault, a really talented runner who found running a bit later in life (she's an opera singer by trade)...she was the fastest woman in the half marathon in 2009 with a blistering 1:15:39 at the age of 40!  Her clinic is all about running form - she went through similar training herself and she found that the better her form was, the faster she was able to run with less chance of injury.  Sign me up!

Looking forward to running in 2012.