Grind the Buckle

I am hoping that this blog will serve as a training log for my build up to the New York City Marathon. Regular training logs are boring. I know this because I used to write one and kept it up for all of two weeks. This will hopefully show a more broad view of my training and not put all my readers to sleep.
After a long spell of training marked by inconsistency and lack of motivation, I am now back to running with a purpose. I will be running the NYC Marathon to raise money for the Lance Armstrong Foundation. My goal is to be under 2:25, which is lofty but realistic if I train well over the next seven months. On Monday, I ran 80 minutes and did the Arboretum loop. I was very pleased with how the run went, considering the moon was not out at all and the last time I ran that loop in complete darkness I tripped and scraped up my hands pretty bad. The humiliation of explaining how I cut them up was far worse that the pain of the fall. The highlight of the run happened two minutes in when, upon seeing me in my tiny shorts, some woman looked at me and went "You KNOW we don't do that in the hood."
On Tuesday, I met up with my GBTC teammates for the first time in over a month. I ran to the South Boston track and met the guys for the warm-up. After that, Chris, Max, Mike, Vinay, and I did a 35 minute loop along the water. It was good to see the guys again and to not be running on my own. The run totalled 120 minutes and a solid portion was well under 7 minutes which is smoking for me at this point.
Today I was feeling the two hours from yesterday and kept the pace pretty gentle. I ran 60 minutes with a large portion on the Franklin Park cross country course. We took the kids to the Celtics game tonight and I was lucky to sneak my run in before dinner, since we didn't get back until 9:30. Hopefully, I will be around 90 miles this week and will keep bumping it up until I get over 110. I just need to keep grinding the buckle.