Enjoying the view of NYC on Marathon Sunday.

So the fall has rapidly thrown itself upon us, and the dirty taste in my mouth from Chicago ’10 is in the rearview mirror.

That said, there are still some things that I need to figure out – training, health and what the hell happened in The Windy City.

So I’ve been back running for about three weeks, getting my mileage back up to the 80-miles a week mark.  Included in the first few weeks back have been a couple of workouts that are somewhat different to what I have been used to over the recent marathon training months – 12×200 and 16×400.

Now I am not necessarily certain as to which race will be my next “focus”, but watching the NYC Marathon this morning only gets my appetite going to not only start racing again, but get back to the marathon.  With that, I am not sure jumping back into marathon training would be the proper route to take.

Over the course of the next few weeks/end of 2010, I plan to change things up a bit and get out of my comfort zone with workouts.  I’ve started to incorporate some short interval workouts already, as evidence by the 12×200 and 16×400, as well as progressive runs.  I really feel as though progressive runs will help me to structure my basic run days a bit better.  What I have been doing so far is starting my regular runs (maybe once or twice a week) at 7-minute pace, and then gradually work my way down to 6-minute pace.  Not only will this give me a purpose on those days where I am just out running in between workouts, but also get me used to running negative splits.

You may have noticed that in the “things i have to figure out” that I talked about above I mention heath.  Two items here that needed to be addressed here – iron levels and some slight chest pains I’ve been having.

I recently went to the doctor and had some blood drawn, took an EKG and scheduled a stress-echocardiogram.  I have had some iron issues in the past, and have recently been feeling run down a bit and want to check up on my current levels.  In terms of the EKG and echo, it is better to be safe than sorry.

Time to enjoy the rest of weekend and rest up for another week of running and work. Thinking about possibly racing next weekend, but we will see.

- Craig

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