The first twice

I've done one two-a-day workout before, and that was last fall when I went for a morning run and a lunch time bike ride. I thoroughly enjoyed it. When triathlon training begins in earnest here in a couple months (post-marathon), I'll be doing more of those, as my swimming will always be taking place in the early morning, with bikes or runs later those same days.

Last week was a cutback week. For those that don't know, a cutback week is intended for your body to have a chance to recover and rest a little from the stresses of endurance training. It's also good to have the emotional and mental break from it that you need as well. So all of my runs last week were shorter, I let one day of cross training fall out, and then there was Valentine's Day...

For Valentine's Day, my gift to my wife was to paint our bedroom. Whoever lived there before us had had something odd screwed into the wall, and had not patched it or painted over the bad patch properly, and ever since we moved in we've been trying to decide what to do with those walls. Well, now they're a mossy/sagey green. This task, however, took almost all of the day on Saturday, leaving me no time to get in a longish run. (Remember, it was a cutback week, so the long run was set to only be 8-10 miles). Anyway, so that run fell through as well, leaving me with a 12 mile week. Not a good plan when you're marathon training.

So yesterday I decided to make up a little for lost time. I did a 5 mile run at lunch while watching the Tour of California on TV. Then, after the kids were in bed, I hammered out another 6 on the treadmill while watching The Client. It made for an 11.1 mile day. Not bad for a Monday. I may double up again today or Thursday, and I may throw in a two-a-day once a week or so, just to get the miles up there. As they say, there's no substitute for time on your feet when it comes to marathon training.