Happy Monday!

I continue to feel great and am *so excited* about that. I'm still just a teeny bit stiff. But it's that good "I exercised and I'm sore" feeling. I've been waiting for that! I guess finally my body has just caught up to everything and I've figured out exactly how far I can push myself and still live to tell about it. It's such a difference from my recovery after the half. I was DEAD for several days. And just hurt like the dickens. But, I've run that distance (and then some) again twice. So maybe my body isn't protesting it like it did the first time. Progress. Saturday's miles were almost a half marathon and a 5k. Who on earth would have ever thought that I would run 16 miles. Ever. In a day. At one time. WOO HOO!!!

I did pilates this morning and that felt good. Lots of s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g. Nice.

I read in the Galloway marathon book a lot about walk breaks. We have been utlizing that strategy with the walk/run intervals since the beginning of the training. I kind of thought it was more like a "oh I can only run this far and need a break" kind of thing. But there really is a physical reason to do this. According to the running guru, walk breaks vary the use of your muscles so they keep their 'bounce' as they conserve resources. By walking early on in the race, you avoid using up your resources early. Alternating the exertion level and the way you use your running muscles gives them a chance to recover before they accumulate fatigue. So it reduces the damage to the muscle and, in turn, leads to a quicker recovery after the long run. By alternating running and walking muscles, you distribute the workload among a variety of muscles. To receive maximum benefit from the walk break, you must start them early (even during the first mile) before you feel fatigue. If you wait until you feel the need for a walk break, you've already reduced your potential performance. Walk breaks "earn you a discount" early in the run from the pounding on legs and feet. He even says that serious marathoners have made drastic improvements in their time by taking walk breaks early and often. It's better to take a 1 minutes break every 5 minutes than a 5 minute break every 25 minutes. It leads to quicker and more effective recovery.

That's all probably more than you wanted to know....but it's my blog so I can write about whatever I want to! But the use of walk breaks was something that definitely helped me recover from Saturday's sixteen miler. Learning about the reason for the walk breaks is just more learning and education on training and running. And that's a piece of my marathon training pie. Which I am sharing with you, my faithful readers! I really thought this whole 'run a marathon thing' was just go out there and run 26.2 miles. Hardly. For something so simple, it sure has a lot of pieces to it.

Happy Monday everybody! Hope you have a good day!