Dear World,

Tonight I went for my first “long run” of this training season.  It was honestly a pretty easy 6 miles overall but about mile 4.5 to 5.5 kind of sucked.  Work has been ridiculous recently, I’ve been eating like crap (not exaggerating… I’ve gained around 8 pounds since I ran the Indy Mini Marathon at the start of May) and drinking too much, and I definitely have not been getting enough sleep.  So while I was pounding out my last mile and a half tonight I came up with some marathon rules for myself:

1. At least 8 hours of sleep the night before I do any run more than 5 miles.
2. No drinking the night before a 5+ mile run.  
3. No “treating” myself with indulgent food outside of post-long run brunch.
4. Before I have any other kind of beverage I need to drink the same amount in water.
5. At least one yoga class per week for my hips (preferably 2 or 3 most weeks).

I took preparing for my long runs seriously during training last year but was kind of notorious for making bad decisions the nights before early morning weekday runs (there’s a story about me eating an entire wheel of gouda cheese with a friend the night before an 8 mile run that I don’t think I’ll ever live down…).  This go around is going to be different-I want to actually enjoy my shorter runs (and build up some speed) so I’m going to behave myself.

What training “rules” work for all you other runners out there?