I have made it through week 3 of marathon training:

… but just barely.

That’s the graph of running miles vs. how I felt miles. Weeks with tall green bars are ones where you feel great. There were no tall green bars in my week.

I blame poor nutrition and lack of sleep from the vacation. You know that feeling, like you need a vacation to recover from your vacation? Yeah, that was my week.

I have two more weeks until the LA-DU, my next *big* race.

To me, the LA-DU is a bigger deal than the half-marathon was in April. And don’t get me wrong, the half marathon was great. It felt awesome to say, “I ran 13.1 miles.” But the LA-DU is on a different plane, because I did it last year (miserably, on a team) and its a benchmark to prove to myself that I am a different, stronger, better, person who has accomplished something that took a lot of time and dedication.

So, I’m nervous as all hell.

But I also feel really confident, if that’s possible. I’ve done the cycling course in training probably a dozen times on a bike and 2 or 3 times on foot. I’ve done the running routes dozens and dozens of times. I know that the whole duathalon will take me less time than the half-marathon did.

I just want to make sure that I give it my all. And this weekend, this is the last chance that I’ll have to push my fitness before the race. I’m as fit as I’m going to get for this race.

I haven’t finalized my marathon training strategy working up to this race, but … I’m going to stick with it (and squeeze in a little extra cycling on easy days, if I’m up to it) until 3 days before the race. That isn’t much of a taper, but I don’t want to fall behind when marathon training ramps up the mileage, either.