While everyone else received the news on their NYC marathon entries, I got my Peachtree number in the mail this week. A well-earned timegroup 1A for me. This will be my 4th Peachtree and so far the one I'm the least enthusiastic about. I want to be excited, but running is becoming a lot of work for me lately. It could have something to do with this being the first Peachtree in which I'm not a part of a running club.

There are benefits to a group, but there are benefits to running alone too - primarily that I run at the time and location of my choosing and usually without getting into a car first. But I miss running with other people. Maybe I'll get around to rejoining with some group or another.

I worked on my "heel-striking" this week. I didn't notice much of a difference during the 5.5 mile run on Tuesday, but that could be because it wasn't much of a run in the first place. I probably walked the last full mile. Today's 8 mile run wasn't much better but I forced myself to run the whole thing (with my usual 8/1 walk breaks). I was groaning and gasping up that final hill. Ever since that great 9 mile run a couple of weeks ago, running has been a struggle.

Back to the heel-striking. I focused on landing on the ball of my foot and picking up my heels more. Either it's part of my overall exhaustion lately or running this way makes my legs work harder. My calves, hamstrings and quads made themselves known to me in a big way. Maybe the 15 mile bike ride on Sunday gets some of the blame for that.

Anyway, I am looking forward to a break from strenuous exercise this weekend with a little get-away to Charleston with MOB. We leave tomorrow and come back on Monday. I can't wait. Will bring the sketchbook along.

Speaking of sketching, I've been working on a secret project. I'm doing a bunch of little drawings that I'm going to scrapbook as a gift for someone. I am dying to post them. Even though the person I'm making them for probably doesn't read this blog, it's safer if I don't. I will scan them and post them after I give them away though.

So, here's a picture I did a while back. It started as a doodle of a serpent while I was on a long conference call. MOB and I had been spending a lot of time looking at tattoo magazines and searching the internet for a serpent tattoo for him. I told him that I didn't expect him to get this picture on his arm but I wanted to give it to him as a gift. The tattoo artist he went to knew his art better than I do and in the end MOB's tattoo doesn't really look like this, but it was fun for me to do.