It has been a long time since I wrote here. The truth is that after the Tiberias Marathon in January I got into a rut and hardly ran for a while. i just felt like my body needed a break. At the same time I could literally feel myself getting more and more lethargic by the day, and gaining more and more weight by the day.
I did not plan to run the Jerusalem or Tel Aviv marathons, and I did not run them. Interestingly, as the dates for these marathons approached I began to feel bad that I was not running in them, and that urged me to decide it was time to get myself back into running. Sure enough, starting off slow and with short distances, i went into an intensive running streak for nearly three weeks. The first week I ran just a couple of times, but then I went two weeks running every single day. There were days in which I could feel my legs were tired, and on those days I kept it short - 5 or 6km, and slow, but most days were in the 8-9km range, and some days were in the 12-13km range.
By the end of the 2 weeks, I was feeling strong again. I am looking forward to a strong summer of off-season running, and then getting back to the marathon training.
One thing I really enjoyed about the running these past few weeks is at no time did I put on my GPS watch. i ran a very natural pace, completely based on how I felt. It is really a joy running without looking at the watch constantly to make sure you are not running too fast or too slow.. I am considering that next marathon season I will run with no watch and run the marathon naturally paced and not watch or expectation paced, and see what happens.
