Update

Injury prevention meets race swag.  I got a rose at the Diva half  finish (the second rose is Kristen's which she forgot in my car).  They were just languishing on the table so Boyfriend found a suitable vase for them.  And yes, I ran something called the Diva Half and have still not written my race report.

The post attached to this photo initially talked about a slight injury I dealt with after Big Sur.  I never got the post finished up, though, and since then I fully recovered and ran my 34th marathon.  So I scrapped the whole violin story about my right leg and thought I'd post a quick update.

There will lots of posts about it coming up, but Boyfriend and I went to Scotland for 10 days last month.  We ran the Edinburgh Marathon together which made for an interesting experience as I have never committed to sticking with someone over 26.2 in the past.  More importantly, we had an amazing, albeit exhausting vacation and saw a lot of the country and more castles and cathedrals then you can shake a stick at.  I studied abroad in Edinburgh 10 years ago.  When I left the country I was fairly confident I would be back to visit in 2 years. When I started "seriously" running I decided I had to run the Edinburgh Marathon since I started on my journey to becoming a runner during my time in Scotland.  It took a decade to get back there, but it was well worth the wait and effort.

I just realized the other day that I ran 3 marathons in 71 days.  I think this type of thing should be easier than running 20 milers on three consecutive weeks in training, but for some reason this type of stunt makes my legs tired.  My hope for my time after Modesto until now was to gain a bit of fitness.  It sort of went the other way.  I was able to keep up a day of speed a week between Modesto and Big Sur but I could tell my paces were slipping even then.  Between Big Sur and Edinburgh I just concentrated on keeping my mileage decent with my tweaky right leg.  I've been in a holding pattern with my base but have definitely lost a bit of top speed.

I officially start my next training cycle next week and I feel I am in a good place as a launching pad for another round of serious training.  I was originally targeting the Air Force Marathon as my next goal race but decided I needed a bit more time so will instead be running the Two Cities Marathon again.  I'd like to actually stop running marathons as training runs for goal marathons, but right now the plan is to still run Air Force as a training run for Two Cities.  This intent is still a little fluid, but it fits into the schedule almost exactly the way Icebreaker fit into Modesto training and that went well enough.