Mike's Marathon Blog

One more month!!!!! Well, one more full month. April won’t be so bad because I will be spending most of the days resting. I don’t even have a run over 15 miles in April (except for the marathon, obviously). March……not so much! I have four 15+ mile runs and two 20+ mile runs. If everything goes according to plan, I will run over 100 miles in March. That is best case scenario, of course.

There were only 4 weeks in February and I had to rest during 1 of them. I still have this nagging IT band/knee injury that just won’t go away. Who knows what surprises I will encounter in March? For the past month, I haven’t had as much time as I used to. My work hours changed, therefore my gym schedule changed. During the first few months, I was able to swim and attend Spin class. Both of these cross-training exercises got me to where I am today. Both swimming and Spinning are the healthiest forms of exercise I have ever done. Spin class would actually make my sore legs and knees feel better. I unfortunately do not have the time to do either. There are only certain time windows that I can swim at the Y and I can rarely make it to any of the scheduled Spin classes any more. Therefore, my workouts have to be extra tough.

I have been doing circuit training at least 2 days per week. Circuit training is both a cardio and strength training form of exercise. It’s basically a full-body exercise for an hour straight. It doesn’t compare to Spin class, but it fits into my current schedule. I still run 3 days per week and lift every Friday. I still haven’t worked out on a Sunday in about 2 months. It’s mainly because my rest days consist of running half marathons and my non-rest days consist of 18+ mile runs on the toughest stretch of the marathon route.

February recap:

– 76 miles running (3 weeks)

– 8 hours in the weight room

– 1 Spin class