Further ruminations on the marathon

I did my first post-marathon run today, and other than the torrential downpour that greeted me just as I got to the park, it wasn't bad.  I only did 3 miles, and I might have run longer if it hadn't been for the rain making my shoe insoles creeping up under my toes.  My middle toes were still feeling kind of squished, and truthfully I'm not sure how long it's going to take for them to return to some kind of normal, which is a little freaky.  The swelling and blisters have gone down, but they're still pretty sore.  Hopefully in another week they'll be feeling more normal.

So I'm thinking a lot about where things kind of went wrong in terms of not hitting my goal time, and I think it comes down to a general aversion I have to pushing myself outside of my comfort zone.  This is something I've probably always been struggling with, but I've noticed it most since I started trying to get back into running shape after Charlie was born.  I have potential to be going much faster than I have been, but I have a hard time maintaining it, for whatever reason.  I need to work more on the speedwork, if for no other reason than to get used to how it feels to not be comfortable and to push myself.  I tend to give up too easily, and I just need to get past that.  I do need to cut myself a break, too, because in the grand scheme of things, I'm not all that experienced of a runner.  Every marathon teaches me more about what I need to do differently in the training, how I need to learn to push myself, all that good stuff.  I'm pleased with how I did Pittsburgh, since I think I did the best I could have done for how I was feeling on the day, but I've got high hopes that Columbus will be even better.

The other big thing I need to do is more stretching and cross training.  My sports medicine doc ( Dr Hottie ) said my IT band is incredibly tight, and that's obviously a recipe for disaster, so I need to get better at doing the things I need to do to make sure to stretch it out.  I also think that adding in a day of spinning or swimming could only do me good.  So my blog readers are going to help to keep me honest and accountable here!  Remind me to stretch, remind me to do something other than just run, and hopefully, I'll do even better in Columbus than I did here in Pittsburgh.