in the rotation

I'm in the middle of week 7 of my 18 weeks of training for the Spinx Marathon. All the training so far has been fairly similar to the training I've done for my half-marathons....which is great, since I'll be running the Virginia Beach Rock 'n Roll Half Marathon with my friend Allison in three weeks.

I feel prepared for the half marathon, but the full marathon is seeming a little elusive at the moment. I've been averaging between 20-25 miles per week since January. But the increase in mileage is starting to take its toll. This week I'll run 29 miles, next week 30 miles, the next week 32 miles and the next week I'll scale back to 29 (finishing off with the VA Beach race). But then the mileage ramps back up again.

The next twelve weeks are looking loooooong. I'm doing what I can to survive training...and I'm certainly open to any ideas y'all have. Right now I'm focusing on hydration, nutrition and rotation. Yep, I had to break down and go and get another pair of running shoes. I've got around 700 miles on my old Asics and I still plan to run in them, but I thought now would be a good time to break in a new pair of shoes for the big race. After all, I've got around 330 miles before the marathon.

I took advantage of the tax-free weekend we just had and a $10 off coupon that I found. Here are the new parts in rotation.

So, I've got three pairs of shoes in my training rotation: the new Asics, the old Asics and the Nike Free Run (still just for recovery runs). How on earth did I go from not running at all 20 months ago to talking about shoe rotation and marathon training?