Fall is here!! I feel like it just roared in on me. I went home for one week to celebrate my sister’s wedding, and when I came back, the leaves had changed colors and quite a few have fallen down already. It is so beautiful, and I am loving my favorite season. Usually fall to me is cross country. I have always adored cross country season, and it is weird not racing cross as much after college. Since coming to ZAP, I have not raced too many cross races, but at least last year, I was able to do two in the fall and one in the spring, as well as plenty of fall road races. This year has been completely different due to the fact that I am training for my first marathon! It hardly feels like October to me because I have barely raced and in some ways feel as if I am still in the base phase of training, so it must be summer, right? Wrong. The leaves have shown me that fall is here, and New York Marathon is not so far away!! It is almost here. We are four weeks out and in crunch time. I am getting excited, but working to maintain the proper level of gusto that the marathon requires. Training too intensely has always been a problem for me; I have a tendency to grasp and pull every last bit of fitness out of each run. Learning to rein in that desire has been a large part of the marathon process for me and becomes especially important in these least last few weeks. I am fit, so instead of grasping for more fitness, now my focus has to be to go into race day as healthy and fresh as possible. While this is not my natural tendency, lucky for me that I have Burg and Pete to keep me in check!!