I finally did a 20-miler today!!! I was hoping to have done it last Sunday, but I bailed after 8 miles. I regretted it after I got home and I decided that I do it this weekend.

I felt pretty good for the first 15 miles, but then I started to feel the onset of cramping in my left calf which caused me to do a lot of walking. I would run a bit and then as I feel my calf starting to cramp, I would walk so as to prevent it from actually cramping. I need to find a way to deal with this. Others have recommended various electrolytes tablets and I think I will definitely need to get some.

I drank a lot of fluid….a total of 120 ozs of which 64 ozs was Gatorade Endurance. Together with 2 Gu gels, I would have thought that would have provided sufficient electrolytes.

In the end, I ran the 20 miles in 3:51 which is quite an improvement over my last long run of 19 miles 4 weeks ago which took me 3:57.

Now I get to taper for 2 weeks. My plan is about 15-20 miles this week and then 10-15 miles the last week with no running in the 4 days before the marathon.

Now that I’ve burned well over 2,500 calories on my run today, I’m going to enjoy some Buffalo Chickien Wings for lunch!!!

This week actually turned out to be a great week of running for me. As I mentioned in last week’s post, I decided to try something a bit different this week. I decided to run just 2 miles at a time. Since that isn’t much running, I ran doubles for the 3 days that I was running just 2 miles. Just focusing on 2 miles at a time helped me mentally. Also, running doubles for the first time, and for 3 days in a row was a rather interesting experience. I know it’s nothing like the mileage that elite runners do when they run doubles, but just the aspect of having to get dressed to go running and to go out the door twice in a day was actually fun.

After the three days of running 2 mile doubles, I went back to running once a day, but just ran 4 or 5 miles.

At the end of the week, I ended up doing all my runs at sub-10 pace and I ended up running eight days in a row. The last time I had a stretch of consecutive sub-10 runs was back in May. Of course, back then, the number of miles was much higher that what I ran this week . And I’ve never run eight days in a row either.

So, I’ve ended the week at 25 miles. It’s not the kind of mileage I expected to running at this point when I started training, but maybe this is just what I need as Chicago approaches….a little confidence.

My main concern this week was the pain I had on my right foot.  The x-ray I had taken came back normal.  I gave my foot a couple days rest and the pain seems to be gone.

I also got the result of my blood test.  It does showed my platelet count is a bit low, but it doesn’t seem to be anything to worry about.  Everything else fell in the normal range.  It would have been nice if they did find something wrong as it would have explained while I seem to be getting fatigued after running just 2-3 miles.  Maybe the problem is really just the weather.

I think I need a mental boost right now so i decided to try something new for the remaining 4 weeks.  I decided to run just 2 miles without any walking and do that 4 days in a row. Every 4 days I’ll an extra 1/2 mile and gradually build up the distance I can run without having to walk. Since that isn’t much running at all, I’ll do double runs each day, at least initially.

It actually worked well for me this morning.  I went out and ran 2 miles and I actually did it at a sub 9:00 pace which was a great mental boost for me I’m hoping this will help with my confidence as I approach the Chicago marathon.

I was worrying about having to taper, but after thinking about it, I’m not running much these days anyway, so I’m not going to try and taper for the marathon except for resting the 4-5 days before the marathon.

The last 2 weeks have been about the same as it’s been for the last few months.  I did set one important goal for last Sunday’s run though.  Regardless of how bad I feel I’m running, I wanted to do a long run where I was on my feet for 4 hours.  I decided not to bother about worrying about pace or how much I had to walk, but rather, just to keep moving forward for 4 hours.

That long run started off about the same as my previous runs, but I’m happy to report that I managed to keep moving for 4 hours and I managed to cover 19 miles.  I had figured that I would have probably done at least 18 and I was hoping I could have made 20, but I was happy with the 19 miles.  I did notice some cramping in the last mile if I tried to run so the whole of the last mile was spent walking.

I plan to do one more long run like that before my marathon, but I hope to make it a 20-miler.