Friday Night Par-tay

One of the biggest bummers about training for a marathon is how much additional sleep you need in the heavy mileage weeks before taper. When you combine last Sunday's 20-miler with mid-week runs of 5 miles and 9 miles, a Halloween get-together one night, and a late night party to celebrate the sale of one of my clients the next, well, let's just say there was no disco ball last night.

I was home by 6 PM. I finished making what E proclaimed the best risotto ever made by 7:30 and we had eaten the entire pan by 8 PM. Immediately, I got horizontal on the couch with reading to deal with the expansion of rice in my stomach -- turns out, there is such a thing as risotto that tastes too good! I had eaten entirely too much (as had E).

By 9 PM, I finally started to recover from the stomach stretching, so I fell asleep, for the second time this week with reading material on my stomach while I lay on the couch under my reading lamp.

E prodded me to bed at 9:30 when it became apparent that my promise to watch a movie with him was quite empty.

I woke this AM at 8:30, rested for the first morning in quite some time.

This undeniable need for sleep is making me seriously reconsider my desire to run a marathon on our next big trip. It takes so much time out of life just to do the required running to train for a marathon. But when you add the required sleep, that's when things really start to have to take a hit.

Of course, it's really only a couple of weeks of the super-long mileage and additional sleep. And they are hard to remember when you cross the finish line.

Today, on my leisurely slow 5 mile run, I remembered the fun of just running to run. Much of the training for a marathon adds a level of discipline that removes some of the joy of just running to run. On the other hand, the discipline often forces me out on my feet to experience joy that I otherwise may have skipped.

In short, I'm reserving my commitment to the race I'd planned for next April 'til after my next Marathon.