I'm still over here attempting to train for the Marine Corps Marathon. But my body is throwing me increasingly more obvious warning signs indicating it might not actually be a good idea.

Take Saturday's long run for example. My training plan called for 10 miles, but I only managed to do 8.



I was a bit apprehensive about the distance since my previous three long runs had not gone especially well.

• I felt faint during my seven miler and ended up walking the last three miles. 
• I had to skip my nine miler because my hip was bothering me. 
• The six miler that started it all off -- well I finished it, but it wasn't particularly pretty.

But I was determined to see the 10 miler through. I mapped out a course the night before, set my alarm for early in the morning so I could beat the heat and laced up my new running shoes, which I hoped would put an end to the knee/hip pain I'd been having.

The first mile felt pretty good. It was an easy pace, my new shoes made it feel like I was running on clouds. I was cautiously optimistic.



By mile three, all the good feelings had vanished and the run felt hard. I think a lot of that had to do with the sun coming out in pretty full force. So I just mentally prepared myself for a tiring remaining seven miles.

Around mile 4.5, I knew I was going to have to amend the course I had planned to do to so I could find some more shade to run in. The parts of the run that happened in the shade were far more tolerable than the miles happening in the sun. I realized on my pre-determined course, the last five miles or so would be completely in the sun with almost no shade.

I called an audible and decided I'd finish my run in a different neighborhood that I knew would offer more shade.

But by mile 6.5, I knew I'd have to cut the run short. My left IT band/hip/glute was not cooperating and running was starting to get really uncomfortable. I should note, this is very different pain than when I had all those hip problems a few years ago. But still, I didn't want to end up with some new terrible injury so I decided to turn around early and head for home.

I still had roughly two miles to get back to my house, so I did a combo of running and walking and finished the run with 8 miles instead of the planned 10.

If I were in a more positive mood, perhaps I'd say, well hey, 8 miles isn't too bad. But since this has been a trend with my long runs, I'm not sure it's something I can keep ignoring. I'm not convinced my body is back in a place where it's ready to train for 26.2 miles.

I'm leaning more and more toward deferring my entry and trying again next year when I have a better fitness base and not every run feels like some form of torture.

Back in March, I ran the Marine Corps 17.75K to earn myself a guaranteed entry in to this year's Marine Corps Marathon.

I was excited to finally be injury-free again and was looking forward to using the rest of the spring to build a base so I could roll in to marathon training this month feeling strong.



But my appendix had other ideas and it ruptured at the end of April. That landed me in emergency surgery, which was followed by a month-long recovery where any sort of workout was totally off the table. My fitness suffered horribly.

I attempted to rebuild some cardiovascular fitness in early June when I finally felt good enough to run again. It was slow and humbling, but it was something.

Then a few weeks later I got married and spent a week in the Dominican Republic -- marathon training and rebuilding my fitness base was the furthest thing from my mind.



But low and behold July arrived, and it was time to start marathon training.

I looked for super novice, incredibly beginner training plans. You're not supposed to go into marathon training with no running base and literally no endurance. But I didn't want to throw out my hopes of doing the marathon when I still had 17 or 18 weeks until the race.

So I picked a plan and started training a couple of weeks ago.

The three mile runs during the week went OK. Anything longer than that was a real struggle.

I'm sure the insane heat wave we've been having in DC hasn't been helping, but all of my runs have felt really hard. I did two of my long runs on the treadmill to escape the heat. The six mile one went OK. The seven mile run a week later felt like utter death. I had to walk most of the final three miles.



I was supposed to do nine miles this weekend, but I had some glute/IT band/knee issues crop up last week, so decided to skip it to nip any potential injuries in the bud early. I spent some time on my foam roller instead.

This doesn't seem like the most promising start to marathon training, and I'll be honest, I'm not sure this is going to be the year I'm able to run a marathon.

The MCM has an entry deferral program. It doesn't open until August, so I still have time to make a decision and see how things go.

My plan for now is to stick with the training plan for a few more weeks and see what happens. Maybe my fitness will come back faster than I hoped. Maybe this terrible heat will break, and I'll find that the heat was the real problem, not my lack of endurance.

But if not, I can always defer my entry and try again next year.

June was an excellent month of reading, thanks in large part to some lovely pool days and all the downtime I had while lounging on the beach in the Dominican Republic on my honeymoon.

I read nine books in June. The best one was a Goodreads five-start wrenching memoir that I highly recommend.




Love You Hard: A Memoir of Marriage, Brain Injury, and Reinventing Love by Abby Maslin
I got to meet Abby and listen to her read a passage from this book at the Gaithersburg Book Festival. I also briefly got to chat with her in the book tent, while I was there to buy her book. I'm not sure if the fact that I met Abby in person or if the fact that her husband's attack happened not far from where I live made me feel more connected to her story, but this book made me openly weep. I'd be curled up in bed reading and just completely soaking my pillow case with tears. The story of what Abby and her family endured was heart-wrenching. Her ability to persevere through everything and find a way to re-build her marriage and discover a new kind of love with her husband is incredibly inspiring. Read this book.

Death Is Hard Work by Khaled Khalifa
I thought this book was going to be a lot better than it was. It follows the story of three siblings trying to move their dead father's body across war-torn Syria, so that he can be buried in the family graveyard. For being such a short book (only 180 pages), it was a slog to get through. I expected it to be more fast-paced and tense, but even the many perilous and terrifying parts of their journey fell a bit flat and seemed to get lost in the longer, more rambling side stories.

The Guy Not Taken: Stories by Jennifer Weiner
I'm not much of a short-story reader, but my attention span was very short on my honeymoon so this was a great book to have handy. I enjoyed revisiting some of my favorite characters from Weiner's books and meeting some new people too. It was a light and fun beach read.

Disconnected by Jennifer Weiner
I read this short story while on an airplane and flew through it. It's the story of a girl who has been in and out of rehab, and this time promises to clean herself up for real. It was a compelling read, and I'd love to see Weiner expand on this story idea in a full-length novel.

The Friends We Keep by Jane Green
Three students meet as freshmen at college and this book follows them throughout their lives. They don't live glamorous lives and they make plenty of mistakes along the way, but this book celebrates the beauty of a life-long friendship and the bonds that hold those friendships together even through turbulent times. Jane Green is an excellent writer, and I enjoyed this book.

Cape May by Chip Cheek
This book in some ways reminded me of the Great Gatsby. We meet two goody two shoes characters that are newlyweds on their honeymoon in Cape May in the 1950s. They meet the mysterious and alluring neighborhoods down the street at a party and find themselves inseparable during the following weeks, even though they don't always enjoy each other's company. The booze fueled parties and outings test the limits of this new marriage as the characters question their roles and own expectations of the others. This book was an interesting read. It was slower than I prefer, but I also found myself intrigued to see what would happen.

Fly Away Home by Jennifer Weiner
This was a decent book about what happens after a politician cheats on his wife. It looks at the impact on the wife and the kids as they attempt to figure out how to live with the news. It was a good book, but I didn't love it as much as I've loved some of Jennifer Weiner's other books.

The Girls at 17 Swann Street by Yara Zgheib
This books sucks you in from the moment you pick it up and I finished it in a day. The story follows Anna, a former ballerina, and her battle with anorexia. The book begins with her husband checking her in to an inpatient treatment facility and follows her journey there. Some of the most poignant parts of the book are the flashback scenes where she and her husband remember the same instance in very different manners. Even though the book is told from Anna's point of view, we catch glimpses of her husband's struggle to get her help and the toll this disease not only has on the person suffering, but everyone in their orbit.

Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep
To Kill a Mockingbird is one of my favorite books, so I was looking forward to this story about Harper Lee and the last trial she covered and considered writing about. The first two parts of the book, which tell the story of the mysterious deaths surrounding the Rev. Willie Maxwell, were fascinating to read and made it hard for me to put the book down. But I thought part three, the part about Harper Lee and her quest to write a book about the Willie Maxwell trial, wasn't nearly as griping. The story was interesting and Harper Lee is kind of a fascinating person in the literary world, but the pace of the book was just so much slower in the last third, which is why I only gave it three stars instead of four.

Now that I'm recovered from my appendectomy and the wedding is officially over, I'm ready to get back in to a normal running routine again. And lucky me, somehow that coincides with the hottest part of the summer.

I went out for a quick three mile run after work today, and I did a lot of zig-zagging across the sidewalk so that I could run in the small bits of shade that existed.



Running in the summer is always tough, but it's especially tough to try to re-establish a running base while my body is also adjusting to the new hot and humid temperatures.

I haven't had a chance to ease myself in to summer running. I just threw myself in the proverbial deep end.

I think if I want my summer running to be more pleasant I'm going to need to shift back to early morning runs. It's more humid in the mornings, but the sun isn't quite as brutal.

If you've been reading for a while, you probably remember that back in the day, I was a morning runner. I'd set my alarm for 4:30 a.m. and knock out my runs before the sun was even in the sky, and before I had to start a long commute to my office.

But my schedule has changed a lot at work in the last five to seven years, and now I have more flexibility. So as a result I sort of shifted to become a lunch time or late afternoon/early evening runner. That schedule let me maximize sleep and gave me a nice mental break during the day.

Running at lunch time though is not realistic when the highs are climbing well in to the 90s. Even if I carry water with me like I did tonight, it's pretty brutal.

So even though waking up early to run doesn't really seem as appealing as it used to, I think that's what I'm going to need to do if I want to have any sort of consistency this summer. I miss running, and I'd like to get back into it now that some of my life insanity has calmed down. So early mornings, here I come.