When we left off with my story, I had taken over a year away from training or racing after showing symptoms of overtraining, but had tried a half marathon for fun and felt ready to try a comeback. I had a job working on a TV show and signed up for NYC, hoping I could balance marathon training with a full time production schedule, something I’ve never done before.

Newsflash: It wasn’t easy. The 65 hour weeks, early mornings and late nights made running tough. Luckily my department was led by an awesome group of ride-to-work cyclists who never once complained or minded my running to work or changing clothes on the truck. In fact, I don’t even think I was the one who was changing my sweaty clothes on the truck the most! We had lots of locations that were 5-7 miles away, a perfect 1 hour commuting run, and, while we shot into the night often, there were very few true overnight shoots. I managed to squeeze my long runs in on Sundays and got a few speed workouts here and there, mostly by hitting up the treadmill at good old Planet Fitness in the wee hours of the morning, 2, 3, 4 a.m. Since I have so much experience with the Hanson’s plan, I trained with that; those long marathon-pace tempo runs were the hardest. Somehow, though, I managed, with my crew cheering me on the whole way. Read more >>