Over two weeks ago, the time changed to Daylight Savings time, and today is the official marker of spring. These events are a herald of two things, in my mind: hotter days, slower times. While I just run my fastest half-marathon and my fastest five-miler  to date, I know these successes were largely due to the colder, drier weather we've been having in Tampa. But as the last two evenings' runs have shown me, I'm going to have to start working harder if I want to keep my pace down. Monday night's run was actually more positive than negative. I met up with the usual Monday night crowd at Flatwoods. I'd had a lazy weekend and didn't run at all (that was not my intention; I just kept oversleeping), so I felt I should be able to have a decent run that night. For this particular run, the guys usually stick together and run in a pack at the same pace, while the ladies sometimes partition off into couples, or maybe a small group, but almost always at a slower pace th...

So I started training for my first marathon (again) in June. I had a setback almost immediately, hence the NO RUNNING days. After a fairly busy race season over the past fall and winter (three half-marathons), I should have rested before taking on this new endeavor. But I didn't; instead, I joined a running group and intensified my running because I was a newbie and felt I needed to be competitive to prove myself. The result? Unforgiving shin splints and persistent pain in the muscles surrounding my right shin. Out of fear that the pain might turn into a(nother) stress fracture if I kept running, and upon the unsolicited advice of several friends, I grudgingly decided it would be better to rest early on to prevent an injury than to push through and possibly create an injury that may take me out of training completely. I'm the first to admit that I'm stubborn about training. To get a personalized training schedule, I looked at several different training schedule put togeth...