I took the plunge the other day and signed up for a marathon at the beginning of May. The idea had been rattling around in the back of my head for at few months and I didn’t feel like I was getting any closer to committing, but then on a whim I clicked on an email link and within a couple of minutes that was that. Gulp.

The last time I wrote about running, I was pondering relatively low-mileage marathon training. I’ve kind of shifted my thinking since then. While I’m going to keep my Weekly Long Runs fairly short, maxing out at 16 miles, I’ve been getting into the habit of running (or alternatively riding my bike trainer) every day. I’m finding that it’s easier to start my day asking myself when I will do a workout, rather than whether I will do one, and if so, when. As the length of my daily runs builds from 5-7 km to ~ 8-20 km, that means my weekly mileage is going to end up being pretty typical for marathon training, peaking at around 90 km in March/April.

Here is where I’m running four days a week. It’s a perfect route, flat as a pancake near the lake with a bit of elevation loss and gain getting to and from the green-dot start point (which happens to be where Fiona’s dance studio is). It’s about half well-trodden footpaths and half roads-and-sidewalks,. The lake tends to moderate the temperature, helping to melt snow fairly quickly even along the footpaths. A single circuit along the red route totals ~7 km, but by using the blue section I can create perfect 2.0k loops in the park to add to that. Until the snow is gone from the rail-trail, likely in early April, this will be my main Nelson stomping ground.

I’m home in New Denver on the weekends when I do my longer runs. I’ll have to run on the highways there until spring. “Highways” needs to be interpreted in a Kootenays context, of course: they’re two-lane winding mountain roads that are very scenic and little-travelled. I shouldn’t complain. But they’re full of hills, more open and much less interesting than trails, and there are no options for loops: always just out-and-back. So I’ll be very happy when the trails open up in the spring.