How to go from the couch to the Marathon in two weeks:  forget the normal buildup and just go run.  The first week back on the training put me through 65 miles with a couple good sessions. 

I'm a little late getting this update to my page, but last Tuesday was a really solid Fartlek at the Huntsville Running Park - 6 mi in 39:35 with 2 min hard/ 3 min E cycles.  For anyone who hasn't been out to the running park, that's a lot faster than it looks.

Saturday I put in my one real training session for the XTERRA Oak Mountain 42k coming up; a 20 mi run on the mountain.  The average pace was around 8:00 with roughly 7400 ft of elevation change across a very technical loop.  A little past mile 11 I took a dive across a garden of rocks gashing my hand and hitting my knee and head pretty hard.  The heel of my hand had a 5 sq-cm patch of skin torn completely off with dirt jammed up under what remained of the skin...I ran the last 8+ miles with a quarter-inch wide stream of half-dried blood down my arm with droplets occasionally flying off my fingers as I ran.  Something of an occupational hazard of trail running haha

4 days til the marathon... will have a race recap in next weeks blog