Treadmill run?

This past Saturday I was planning to run the SLC Winter Series 15K as my last quality session before the upcoming marathon (Phoenix, March 2nd). Last year at this race I ran 48:04 (2012 Race Recap), breaking the course record on windy day. This year my objective was to just get in some marathon-paced miles and a decent workout. But the weather was abysmal to the point where the 10K from two weeks ago seemed tropical.

Realizing about a minute into our warmup that a quality workout wasn't happening while the snow and wind were blasting, my friend Rob and I pulled the plug on the race and decided to go to the gym for a treadmill workout. This is significant for me, as it was the first time I had run on a treadmill since approximately 2005. Its been so long that I can't even remember specifically. I ended up getting in a pretty good workout on the treadmill, and it was probably good heat acclimatization training, as the weather in Phoenix will be considerably warmer than what I've gotten used to this winter.

It's a shame that I had to bail on the race, and I feel bad for the SLC Track Club - all three of their winter series races were in rough weather this year. Still, they do an amazing job and I really like their races... I'll keep coming back (hoping for better weather in 2014!).

Training has gone better in the past couple weeks. When I was warming up for my workout last Saturday (2/16) I really felt that my body was hanging on by a thread, and was probably 50/50 on whether I was even going to run this upcoming marathon. But I managed to bang out a decent set of mile repeats that morning, then came back and did a 20 miler with 10 miles @ marathon pace the next day. Those runs seemed to help me turn the corner. A couple more good sessions in the past week have left me feeling a lot more confident than I was a few weeks ago. I've been sticking w/ the PT routine Andrea designed for me... and while in some ways I'm still only hanging on by a thread, at least its a stronger thread at this point.

And now its taper week! I'll just do one more light workout to keep my legs from going stale, and then see where the cards fall next weekend...