Back in December, I signed up for a secret marathon. I told no one, except for my husband for the first couple months. To date I’ve told less than 3 people. It wasn’t to be able to make some big announcement, it was because I wasn’t really sure that I’d want to run another marathon in 2019. The marathon distance scares me still. It’s not easy and I’ve never run one that didn’t hurt. It requires a crazy amount of discipline and about 3-4 months of commitment. It means waking up early on Saturday mornings to start long runs and going to bed early on Friday nights to get enough sleep. A half marathon if trained for on its own can be pretty intense but it pales in comparison to the marathon.
I’ve been having a strong itch to do a solid half marathon training block. I did one last winter/spring and completely fell in love with the distance. I talked with my coach a little bit about this and I like the idea of focusing the first half of 2020 on the half marathon. Marathons take up a lot of time. I feel lucky to be where I’m at in my life right now – in a stable full-time job with a good income, home most weeks, and having the flexibility to make my own schedule after work and on the weekends. I recognize that I won’t always have all this time and that life is only going to get busier as I get older. I have goals to grow my business and to one day have a family and while the latter is farther out, we really only have 1-2 good marathons in our legs every year and I want to make the most of that. For awhile, I had hit a plateau in my training and had started to accept that maybe the marathon just wasn’t the distance for me. But then I hired a running coach and ran times that helped me to start believing in myself again and saw teammates accomplish incredible things, too. Things that I could only ever dream of, until suddenly, they didn’t seem so unrealistic.
There are about 10 months left in 2019 and after Boston, I’m excited to do a summer stint of fast racing from May-August. I’m not exactly sure what that will look like yet but I’m pretty excited to hit the track in the heat of summer and run some fast intervals. I think it’s just the kind of thing I’ve been craving. Come fall though I’ll be lacing up my trainers again and hitting pavement training for what I hope will be my 8th marathon, the California International Marathon in Sacramento, CA. I was inspired by so many of the performances I saw at the race last year and want to be a part of that this year. After 2018’s Chicago Marathon, my fourth year in a row running it, I knew I needed and wanted something different in 2019. I think CIM will be that for me and I’m looking forward to being part of a race where many women will make their last attempt at running an Olympic Trials qualifying marathon. While that will not be my goal, I’d still like to run a pretty speedy time. TBD what that looks like, but I’m excited that the cat is finally out of the bag and I don’t have to lie when someone asks me what my fall plans are!
Chasing Unicorns LLC 