Construction continues, and a weekend flys by.

The good thing about working on your own basement is that you have no set schedule to go by...I can work a few hours here, a few hours there. It's also hard--you don't feel like you have to abide by a timeline. But on the upside, things are taking shape. I got to work on the bathroom a little this weekend, and now everything is framed, door is in, all the plumbing supplies, drains, vents, and electricity are all up and running. The biggest part of the bathroom is the shower, since we decide to go with a custom tile shower instead of a pre-fab. A lot of prep work involved. But I got the first layer of bed mortar down, so the process has begun.

In other news, it was a pretty productive weekend with the weather being so crappy. After a long week at work it was great to be able to sleep in both days, got some errands done, picked up a new pair of running shoes (finally), watched some Sopranos, and chipped away at the bathroom. To cap it off we attended a surprise birthday party for a friend of ours too--so it was a great weekend. I finally got Bosco out of the house too--- he hasn't been getting to go on runs lately because of the distances and the temperatures, so he was thrilled to be able to go on two runs in three days. The silver lining I guess of our current winter temperatures. He was able to stick with me for the first 7 miles today--not bad for 50 degrees.

Today happens to mark the completion of 8 weeks of marathon training. To tell you the truth though, it hasn't really felt like a real training program. This year I'm trying a new approach...it's call the FIRST program...you actually only run three days a week---and in the off-days you're supposed to cross-train. I'm actually liking it quite a bit---the workouts are far more intense because they're few and far between, but with my current work schedule theres no way I would have been able to do a real plan this spring. This plan cranks up the miles real quick, and the track workouts are serious....and I hate track running. But I think I've hit my stride finally. Today I averaged a 7:15 on a 19 mile run...suffice to say that if I can keep that up for 7 more miles that equals a Boston Marathon qualifying time. There's 8 more weeks of this though...so hopefully some warm weather running, some more mental-running-game-prep, and healthiness will cap off a successful training program. The most difficult piece of training for this stuff is that there are no guarantees... There really is only one game, so if you screw it up, or aren't prepared, or are injured, or it's too freaking hot out, or if you just plain wuss out...it's a little hard to stomach. Either way its a great accomplishment, but who doesn't like to PR?