End Of summer = mixed feelings :-/

So here it is the last full week of summer (well unofficially).  I'm having some serious mixed emotions.  I love summer especially the last couple years.  Summer is when I spend at least a month in Bosnia/Croatia with Emir's family and the remainder of the time we spend at our shore condo in Wildwood with just a little work mixed in.  This summer has been no exception.  It's been more than wonderful.  The kids are at great ages.  They are interacting and playing with us with each other and it's just so much fun to watch them having a great time especially on the beach.  They are definitely beach bums like their mama!!!  So it's a bit if a downer to see all that end.  Of course we still have a few trips to the shore left before the weather turns colder and there will be tons of other fun activities to enjoy but it just always seems to bring me down how summer goes by way too fast.

Una

Niko

The kids and I

Now the good news!  Since Emir and I have become marathoners, summer ending signifies that the fall races will soon be upon us.  As I had mentioned in a previous post, I was a bit tired after the spring races and maybe wasn't missing being in training too much.  A few weeks ago we started our 12 week training program for the NYC marathon.  It feels so good to be in training again.  Turns out I did miss it!!  Being back in the groove has gotten us excited again.  So of course that always leads to more races ;-). So lets see in addition to running the hat trick at the runners world festival oct 19-20th, the NYC marathon Nov 3rd and the Philly marathon Nov 17th we are now also running the Blues Cruise 50k Oct 6th in Reading because why not?!? We also have signed up for the 4:00 pace group for the Philly marathon.  we have never done the pace group thing.  I'm not sure how I feel about pace groups.  I almost feel like it's cheating because learning/knowing how to pace yourself is really the challenge in running a marathon so if someone does that for you well what are you doing? But we figure why not try it once to see what it's like plus we are doing the NYC marathon only two weeks before Philly so we will need some high energy of a group to get us through.  That is another reason despite wanting to go under 4 hours we signed up for this group.  Hopefully we can break 4 hours in NYC then we will see how we feel for Philly.  As long as we do well in one of them I will be happy ;-)

Our Fall Training Plan

But of course that's not all.  I've already told you that we are running Blue Ridge April 26th and Born To Run 100k May 18th however now we decided to be those crazy people I wrote about in my Blue Ridge race report who run Blue Ridge twice.  Yup we will start around 2-230 AM so we can finish our first marathon in time to run it again with everyone else at 7.  Sounds awesome, doesn't it?!?! ;-)

So in suppose all in all I don't really have anything to complain about.  Summer WAS and IS still great and training so far is going well.  My training pace even on my tired, feeling slow runs is definitely faster than spring.  I feel like I'm really starting to build up my strength and endurance.  I also started using my  Tailwind again.  I didn't really use it over the summer since I didn't do many long runs requiring it but now that I'm "back on it" I can really tell the difference when I use it.  So between my Tailwind and my new virattas my sister-in-law hooked me up with, that's all I need :-)

Emir during our rare long training run TOGETHER :-)  Got stuck on a bridge during an opening :-(

Me on the bridge during our 14 miler

PS don't forget that since I am an official Blue Ridge Marathon blogger there will be a chance in the near future for you to win an entry into the marathon!  Stay Tuned!!!