The miles are ramping up as I am now less than 2 months from running my second marathon. The total miles for the month was 148, not too bad for a short month. It was so cold this month. I hate running on the treadmill for long runs. I can handle being on there for a little over an hour, but several hours, no thank you. Props to those that will bang out 15-20 miles on the treadmill. That is a total mental game. So my long run Saturdays included a lot of layers running with wind chills of 5ish degrees. Luckily, it looks like we have one more cold snap this week and we will be getting back in the normal ranges of temperatures with highs in the 40s and lows in the 20s.

I decided to register for a few more races the other day. I will be running the Naperville St Patty’s day 5k on Saturday, March 16 and then will follow up with a half marathon on the 17th in Bolingbrook, IL. The half will be a challenge to say the least and will really test my fitness level with the elevation changes as it is a really hilly course. I am really excited for this race though since Nashville has so many hills. The plan on this race is to really attack the course and I am shooting for around the 1:50 mark (8:20ish/mile). It looks like the biggest challenge will be at the 10.5 mile mark with a huge climb. 

I didn’t make it in the NYC Marathon, which is no surprise since I joined the other 91% of people that applied in the lottery that didn’t get picked. The fall marathon I am looking at now is the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, DC. I have heard a lot of great things about this race so that will be the one I will be training for over the summer.

On the Crohn’s front, things are still doing awesome and have been really fortunate in this training cycle for Nashville. Yesterday marked 4 years from my last surgery where I had 20ish inches of my small intestine taken out. With that in mind, I went out and ran a solid 13.1 miles and felt really good (13 was on the schedule, but you always go the extra .1).  It’s really hard to believe where I was several years ago versus where I am today. Running was never on my radar and running a marathon definitely wasn’t in the cards and here I am training for my second marathon.

Lastly, I was interviewed for the Cohn’s, Fitness, Food Podcast yesterday and will go live in a little over a week. I’ll post the link when it’s up. Basically, it is about my journey with Crohn’s and journey with running.