Week 2 of 20. Now we're rolling.

Week 2 is in the books.  Work has continued to consume a lot of my energy (mental and physical), but the high mileage load has been a great sanity check.  It helps that nothing is too intense yet; just have to tune out and run.

Increased the mileage substantially, up to 47.5 miles for the week.  I did throw in one tempo run, which was basically just a 20-minute pace increase on my midweek 8-miler.  I was able to get some cross-training into the schedule, with a pretty solid 3000-yard swim on Wednesday, core work on M/W/F, and strength work (lunges, pull-ups, push-ups, etc.) on Monday and Friday.  It's amazing how sore you can get from a couple sets of push-ups when you've been doing nothing but swim/bike/run for a long time.

The weekend was definitely the highlight of my week.  I did the Saguaro East loop (8 miles of hills) at sunset on Saturday.  Sunday I flew out to Albuquerque for work.  I walked a mile to my hotel to loosen up after the flight, and then changed straight into running clothes.  Ended up getting in over 15 miles, with most of it along the Rio Grande.  For this river restoration guru, it was great!  Of course I forgot to pack gels, so my nutritional needs were met by 7-eleven branded jelly beans.  Also forgot body glide...and I had nearly forgotten about the chafe that happens with marathon-type long runs.  Won't be forgetting the body glide again for a while.  Here's a shot from the Rio Grande path in Albuquerque.  Very nice!

Long runs are always an adventure.  Long runs in a different town with some missed turns, getting back to the hotel in the dark, and running through some sketchy neighborhoods make it even more...interesting.

The right ankle is feeling much better this week and I thank my swim.  It included a decent amount of kicking.  It ached a lot at the beginning, but by the end of the swim my ankle had really loosened up, and I was probably feeling about 95% by the end of the day.  Weight on Tuesday was 177.8.  This is higher than I expected to be, but not too shocking considering the relatively poor diet lately.  Hoping to race around 165 in January.  With the mileage and some restraint on the calorie intake, I should be able to drop down pretty quickly.

Hoping to keep the mileage about the same this week, just adding in a bit more length to the tempo run.  Just keep on running... milesonmilesonmiles.