Have you ever. . .

spent a good hour in a serious conversation with somebody who has never been out of the county, except twice in their life?

and. . .has no concept of where any of the states are located??

And they honestly believe that Colorado is near the Pacific?

And thinks any day now, we'll be sending somebody to Mars?

Just wondering. (That's all I'm going to say about that)

I'm going to start posting some of my marathon training here, so that people from Letsrun.com can mock me and others can see what I do. And see what I don't do. And ask me why I am sometimes not doing what I should be doing. And doing what I sometimes should not be doing.

So.

This afternoon consisted of a flat six miles. First three were fairly easy. 4th mile felt blah. 5th and 6th mile were something like a death march. It might have been the chile and chicken sandwich from Wendys I ate at 1 AM Sunday night.

Most of my running for the next 3 months will be in the middle of the afternoon, at sea level, over mostly flat terrain, with fairly high humidity. I should not call it 'marathon training.' It's more like 'pre-marathon' training. That's running to get into shape before you start training.

'TLC training'

Tendons, ligaments, and cartilage will theoretically be strengthened during this phase. Some weight will be lost, and the body will gradually become acclimated to running for longer periods of time. I won't be concerned about mile splits and other times.