A little of this and a little of that.

This morning I did a little cross-training.  I started out with 20 minutes of walking on the treadmill.  Then I moved to the elliptical and did a 30 minute program, followed by another 20 minutes of walking on the treadmill.  Following the cardio stuff, I also did about 15 minutes of upper body strength training.  Thankfully my legs don't feel so lethargic today, and I'm hoping to get enough rest tonight so that I will feel good for my long run tomorrow.

I'm running with a friend and we're planning to do at least 22 miles; we're just going to base our distance on how we feel.  This will be my longest run since the marathon.  It's not really part of my current training schedule to do that distance right now, but I've been feeling like I'm in a very transitional period anyway.  The new training schedule I had picked was a 20 week plan, with the idea that I was considering doing the Salt Lake Marathon, which is April 16.  After one week post-marathon recovery, I had exactly 20 weeks to train for the next one.  I hadn't signed up for the SLC Marathon, though, and was also contemplating doing a marathon held in Boise, ID in May, since we have family in the Boise area and we though it would be a fun trip to combine doing a marathon with visiting them.  For some reason, neither of these two options were really clicking for me, though.  I mean, I was having trouble getting excited about doing either of them, for various reasons.  The only other spring marathon that is local enough to be feasible is the Ogden Marathon.  The friend I am running with tomorrow had signed up for that one with the people from her running group several months ago, as it had become so popular that it fills up very quickly.  After spending lots of time online looking at my marathon options, pictures, reviews, etc., I was wishing I had known sooner that I would want to do another marathon so I could have had time to register for the Ogden one before it filled up, but since that wasn't the case, I'd kind of been dragging my feet on committing to one.  But, about a week and a half ago, I received my January issue of Runner's World.  In this issue is an article about the 10 best races for first-time marathoners across the country, and the reasons why people like to run them, and the Ogden Marathon was featured in the article.  At the end of the piece on Ogden, it said: "The 2011 event is sold-out, but space has been exclusively reserved for Runner's World readers.  To register online, use this code: "runnersworld".  So, I immediately jumped online and registered...and now off we go!  I have something I am excited about and very much looking forward to doing - May 21, 2011!  Now, I need to look for a new training schedule that suits me better, and fits my new timeline.  :)