Can a marathon ever sneek up on you? I've known for a month or so now that the Pocatello marathon is on September 3rd. My family has been making Labor Day plans around it, so it's not like I didn't know the date. But after hitting snooze a couple of times a few mornings ago and then asking/telling myself what day it was (I find myself doing this frequently) a light went off and for whatever reason it dawned on me that September 3rd was a mere 11 days away. I proceeded to have a good workout, a good 7 miles of hills, but I knew that my training was pretty much done at that point. I've since had a decent 8-miler on Thursday and a 9 mile final tune-up run this afternoon (in the blazing heat). There's still a few shorter runs that await me between now and next weekend but nothing of any consequence. I am what I am at this point and what I am is a runner who doesn't feel like he's put in as many miles my previous 7 marathon starts.

It's not that I've been lazy, I've just been doing other things. For many weeks I was devoting a lot of time to learning to swim. I also have been doing a fair amount of cycling since I bought a bike at the beginning of the month. My long Saturday runs the past few weeks consisted of a 12-miler followed by a 10k race, a solid 20-miler, a 5k as part of a sprint triathlon, 10 miles last weekend, when other commitments prevented anything longer and then the 9 miles today. My Tuesday/Thursday runs have been shorter than normal as well, usually in the 6-8 mile range rather than the 8-10 range. But they've been more focused -- a day devoted to speed work, a day of hills etc. The total mileage hasn't been too much less, but it feels like less. Like I said though, its too late to do anything about it now. I am what I am.

Maybe it will be a good thing though, the cross-training. There's an article out there currently, and a response from Amby Burfoot from Runner's World, about whether or not cross-training is effective or not. Personally I don't really care if it's helpful or not. Until a month or so I had never done any sort of cross-training. My time to exercise and train is limited and the time I did have I was going to spend running. After 25 solid months of this, though, I can tell that I've been approaching a bit of a burnout point, so the option to cycle or swim has been good for me. I do it for fun and for variety. It also allows me to get a bit more sleep, as I can go out for a quick, hard 7 mile ride in 20 minutes or so or spend 30 minutes in the pool -- much shorter than the hour minimum I feel like I need to run to really feel like I got a good workout in.

Will less miles, more focused training runs and more cross-training have a positive effect when the gun goes off next Saturday morning or will I be hating life during the 2nd half of the race? We'll see. Here's last year's Pocatello Marathon recap.