Time is speeding up.  Days are over before I know it.  Years fly by.  This year’s running season will be over so soon.  Looking back, seven events seem like a full year.  Four half marathons, one full, one 10K and one mile.  Oh, and the Boulder Distance Classic – I forget exactly what odd number of miles that was.  So eight running events.  That’s a full year I guess but I can’t believe I have only two runs remaining and that the season will be over after September.  It does help define my training requirements though.

Training was a challenge when my focus was to improve my 10K speed but I had to run a marathon the weekend immediately following the Bolder Boulder.  Now, I have the Flaming Foliage Relay in three weeks followed a week later by the Boulder Marathon.  The relay requires intense distance training so it pairs nicely with the marathon.  The relay also will present me with a 12.5 mile trail run over a mountain pass, but the Boulder Marathon has rolling hills so some hill training will apply to both events.

I’m a bit pensive training for my last run.  I’m channeling my gloom though into better preparation.  The furthest distance I ran training for previous marathons was maybe 12 miles.  I ran 18 last Saturday.  I’m targeting 20 miles this coming Saturday.  I thought I would be running the Manitou Incline but I got my weekends mixed up.  That will be the following weekend.  So maximum distance and one of Colorado’s most notorious hill climbs.  Then I’ll have one remaining training weekend.  I expect I’ll run Mesa Trail with my relay team.  Keith and Steve ran that before the Epic Relay and they were prepared.

This pic is from my most recent run, the GTIS Half Marathon.  I just can’t believe my final run of the year is in only four weeks.  Not sure what I’ll blog about after that.  I do have a Diana Krall concert a few days later.  And two weeks later I’m going to watch the CU Buffs tackle Oregon.  That’s right, college football is starting up.  Who has time to run?