And we move forward

So much going on and learning so much as I go. My training is going well, but have had some setbacks on my Marathon Training. In the last month I hit a mental wall I finally got over two weeks ago. My training is mostly done during the week on a treadmill and around my home. On weekends, I like to stroll down Town Lake in Austin. The trail I typically run in is a 10 mile loop and for some reason anytime I want to go more than 10 I can never mentally do it. Basically, I don’t like to go around the same places twice, so when I finish my 10 miler, I am done mentally.
Because of this, I started to get concerned that I am not training properly and or I am just not improving. So, I decided two weeks ago to do a 14 miler in my neighborhood. The only bad thing is that it is very lonely and the scenery is not as nice. In any event, I decided to run in my neighborhood and had a decent run. I ended up getting over my mental block and so I went ahead and ran my 18 miler at home as well. For this run, I ended up having to walk a bit and ran very slow and in addition to all this the balls of my feet were killing me. The only good news was that my knees did not hurt at all. At the end of my run, I decided to take an Ice bat, and boy did that hurt.
This weekend, I get to scale down to only 12 miles, but I am going to go ahead and run 14 again since I was supposed to do 20 last week and only did 18. The last two weeks have been Christmas and so the food intake has not been good, and mentally I have not been there. Today I returned to the gym and just did not have it, so I rode the bike. Tonight I am going to scale down to 3 miles and tomorrow for a confidence booster I am running indoors on the treadmill so I can prove to myself I can go fast than I have been and let go.
This week is going to be a long mileage week, but I am ready for the challenge. In addition to my running I have started working on stretching more and more and also this week I incorporate weight training again. Biking, swimming and weights should really help and during weight training will be adding HIT training to help with my anaerobic conditioning. We will see how things go and the most important commitment this week and for two weeks is EATING GOOD.. This means no junk food and going to eat lean meats, veggies and most importantly the weekend I will NOT have a mental breakdown like I do almost all weekends. This will be for two weeks and lets see how I feel, plus I can lose the weight I have gained in the last week.

Onward.