Ran My Longest Long Run Since September 8th in Anticipation of L.A. Marathon

Training through the December holiday season is a bit of a challenge, among holiday festivities, shopping, parties, and, of course, colds. Yes, somehow I managed to catch two separate colds this month. Both of them were fairly short in duration, but as I age, I seem to encounter longer periods of chest congestion and coughiing after battling off the sore throat, runny nose and sneezing. I still wake up with a cough, but, I'm feeling pretty good at this point.

Speaking of catching colds, it was a specific Saturday lunchtime when the kids and I visited one of our favorite local restaurants, which I will leave unnamed as it is not important. The cashier, someone who I immediately recognized and said hello to from prior visits when he served the food, briefly turned away and looked like he was sneezing or wiping his nose. For a brief second I thought, this is not good. But I was in the middle of ordering and the kids were unwieldy. There was only one available table in the restaurant and it had plates on it. The cashier bussed the table. Then, minutes later, the same guy served our food.

Five days later...slight sore throat and lethargic. I KNEW that was a mistake but sometime's it's hard to steer clear of viruses. And when you're constantly getting inadequate sleep, you're more susceptable to catching a cold virus.

I digress. My training has been consistently light to moderate this month, even after I attempted to motivate myself to train more by signing up for the Los Angeles Marathon on March 9, 2014. So today, the last Saturday of 2013, I managed to get out there and run 14 miles on the roads in 1 hour, 45 minutes. Not a bad start to my training. I figure I have about 6 weeks of training before a 3 week taper. This is not an optimal amount of time, but I'm not taking this marathon particularly seriously.

I have fond memories of the LA Marathon in the mid-1990s, when I was a heck of a lot younger and able to train a lot harder in my pre-marriage, pre-kids state. My first sub-3 hour marathon was the 1995 LA Marathon in 2:48. The next year I ran my first sub-2:40 marathon at the 1996 LA Marathon. Then my PR marathon was the LA Marathon the next year in 2:35, back when the course was still a loop around Los Angeles. That was my 8th marathon. Now I've run 31 of them, with #32 hopefully happening next March.