Change Of Plans

So in the last week I have had a change of plans with my running. I was originally planning on doing the Columbus marathon as my next marathon, but for some reason (mostly b/c I wanted to make sure I was not injured) I never actually signed up for the race. I knew it would likely not sell out and so I could wait until closer to time.  Now I am not going to do that race. No...I do not have any injury taking me out of running right now. Instead of Columbus, I am just going to do the Monumental marathon instead. Yes I was already signed up to do the monumental half and had totally committed to running it with Kimberlee but she gave me the blessing to just go ahead and do the full. I had 2 main reasons for this change. First, Clark and I officially booked a St. Lucia Sandals vacation for his 50th B.D. week. It is expensive. We are staying in one of the Ultra Grande Rondoval suites with private plunge pool,  whirlpool and butler service. You only turn 50 once and since we are doing this instead of a party, we sort of went more on the expensive side. All that means for me now is that I go into a super saving mode. So Monumental is cheaper b/c there is no hotel or travel involved. Plus now only doing one race instead of two. The second reason I am not doing Columbus is b/c I will be missing one of Alexis' meets (gymnastics) b/c of our vacation. There are only 8 meets in all and I am bound to miss some based on next year's call schedule as well. The Columbus marathon also fell on a weekend where she had a meet. Now I will be able to go to that one. So there you have it. I am doing Monumental and not Columbus. Decision made. Now I just have to make the phone call to upgrade my 1/2 marathon to a full.

I also now have 3 extra weeks of training to play with so I am trying to figure out how to manipulate the training schedule to factor that in. I think my plan is just to alternate hard week (50 miles for week with 20 mile long run) with taper weeks. So that makes this week a taper week. For the taper long run I will do anywhere from 12-15 miles depending on how I feel I guess. This will put me off schedule with Jaime's long runs which kind of sucks, but I think it will work for me. It also puts me on a taper week the week I run Women's 1/2 with Cathy so that works out better.

Alright, I need to get things ready for the evening madness of getting kids to sports with dinner and homework on the run!

Hope everyone is having a happy day!!