Back in action!

I have been very remiss in posting to this blog, obviously- but much has happened on the running front. In addition to running content, which was the blog's original purpose and inspiration for the name, I've become much enamoured of knitting over the summer, so Greyhoundstyle will thus join the thousands of knit blogs out there in posting pictures of yarn and half-finshed projects that will be completely pointless to any non-knitters. Kind of like my discussions of pace and running nutrition will be hopelessly boring to any non-runners. Oh well.

I finished the Austin Marathon on 2/18/07 in 4 hours and 22 minutes. Way off my original goal time of under 4 hours, but I made a concious decision about 6 miles into the race not to stress about my time and just have fun with it, which I did. It was a beautiful day and a great experience, and I can't wait to do it again, which I am at the Houston Marathon next January 14, '08. I ended up very burned out at the end of my training, and I assumed it was just mental, but after the marathon I was dragging so much that 3 miles in under 30 min. was a struggle. I got some bloodwork done and it turns out I was anemic. I started taking iron supplements and it has turned my running around completely- I am so much stronger and I feel like I can finally reap the benefits of all that marathon training mileage. Anyway, I'm back on track. I ran 22:13 for three miles the other day, and I want to find a 5K to race before the end of the summer. Marathon training starts in earnest on Sept. 1. This time around I'm using Pete Pfitzinger's 18/55 plan (18 weeks, maxing out at 55 miles per week.) It's fairly intense but I think I'll have good results with it. I'm a little concerned about my ability to do 20+ mile training runs alone, but I'm thinking of hooking up with the Austin Runner's Club and maybe someone else there will be running Houston.

On the knitting front, I decided that my summer goal was to learn to knit socks, and after a few false starts and one test sock, I'm turning the heel on the second sock of my very first pair. I've joined a couple of bloggy knitalongs, Sock A Month 4 and a knitalong for the Hanami shawl that starts in September. I'm looking forward to that one if I can manage to wind 800 yards of laceweight by then.