Good times.

this week has been terrific. Great run Monday, great yoga session Tuesday, great CanToo session last night, and great easy run today.

Saturday is my first time back at a Can Too long run, after having missed a few (and only partially made them up in my own training).

It's a 32k, with my longest to date being 22k. Luckily I've had a few around the 22k mark, and my relatively fresh legs will help a great deal. Proportionately it's pretty similar to when I did the half marathon when my longest prior run was the 14.1k run for the kids, plus

my legs are relatively fresh
I am not injured
I'm well hydrated and rested
I'm no longer tired all the time now I've been taking two iron tablets a day

Plus, I've rescheduled my upcoming Perth trip to Feb next year. I had been stressing out big time of how to fit my training and rest requirements in with it!

And the biggest thing of all, is the cloud of anxiety that was shrouding me for about a month seems to have lifted. I have remember that I undertook this whole marathon caper just wanting to finish, and have fun with it!

Last night at training i aimed to stay happy and keep a smile on my face. That was my approach to the half marathon and it really helped me feel the joy.

So, this Saturday, the 32k, I'm approaching it just like I did the half marathon, which is exactly how I intend to approach the full marathon - it's longer than I've ever run before, I expect it to be a challenge, but my goals are to manage the effort, find the joy, enjoy the process, and if at all possible, negative split! And that's all that matters, the time is completely irrelevant.

I've been knocking back a lot of invites to things citing my marathon training but have decided to skip the Saturday recovery run in a week and a half (between the 32 and the 35) so I can go to a bucks night the night before (without stressing about how it will affect me the next day).

This frees me up to do the start to finish series which is 3 8k runs over spring - Sept, Oct & Nov http://www.starttofinish.com.au/default.aspx?s=eventdisplay&id=687

I'll do the first of them on the weekend where I'm missing that Saturday run.

It's so nice not to be feeling as anxious as I was! I expect I'll be hurting Saturday afternoon, so good to have had a bit of an emotional pick me up.