Winter

I have  been able to get an extra seven weeks of training in before winter's stranglehold sucks me dry of any motivation.  Historically I never have been able to run during the months of November - January, so I am really enjoying being outside, and being able to train.  I did have a 17 degree long run 2 weeks ago and a really scary fall where I hit my head last week.  These are the things you contend with in the winter I guess.  If I was running inside, I would be running too fast and too hard and would have definitely injured myself by now.
Riverbank training starts at the end of January, so I have a whole month to just focus on my endurance and flexibility.  Been hitting the hills and focusing on building my long run up to 3 hours by Fall.  Yoga has really been helping keep me fresh and loose.  My mileage has returned to above 30 miles per week, and i plan to hit 35-40  miles per week by the end of January.  I am doing a tempo / threshold run once a week and a long run once a week.  Other than those two runs, the only other quality  that I am getting are from the hills that I include on my daily 6 mile easy runs.  The hard part of all of this is the time restraints of having shorter days.  I can not run in the a.m. its just too miserable that early in the winter.  At night I have been running at 6:30 and it feels like its midnight.  My wife and kids are in bed by the time I get home every night.  Its pretty ridiculous, and I miss my summer runs that end at 7:30 am. I miss seeing the sunrise while I am running, and .. well.. you know..
I am slowly increasing my mileage leading up to Riverbank and plan running some high mileage in the summer with the build up to an October marathon.  The idea of running over 75 miles per week in the summer seems like a lofty goal, but I think that a slow steady build up over the next 10 months will make this goal less insane. 75 miles per week? Eeeek!
This is a big year for me.  If my body can survive a full year without a significant break, I feel that I will be able to reach my long term goals.  If I am not able to take the high mileage that is needed to training properly for a marathon than I will reconsider my long term goals and maybe get into Xterra type racing.  I have 3 years left on my 5 year plan.  We will see.  We will see.

Week 5

I just recovered from a pretty bad head cold so I will it take it easy this week if necessary.  Last night I ran a nice 4 mile progressive run starting at 8 minutes per mile down to 7:12 minute per mile pace.  I felt pretty strong at mile 3 and finished the 4 miles feeling pretty good.  The night before I mapped out a new 5 mile course with about 1 mile of steady hill climbing.  I need to keep myself  from getting  bored with my winter running so I have the feeling that I will be doing more course creation as the months move on.  I have a few weeks left before I start really training for the River Bank Run and am enjoying this halfway serious training plan.  My goal for the next few weeks is to hover around 30 miles a week with maybe half of the miles being run at a faster than marathon pace. Speaking of marathon pace, I think that this year might be my Chicago year.  I'm going to wait to see how I feel in February, but I am thinking that I want to focus 100% of my efforts on running The Chicago Marathon in October.  If I can keep myself healthy and get stronger I might be able to do this thing.  Honestly, I can not imagine running 7 minute miles for 3 plus hours, but we will see.  We will see.