12.31.18 Week in Review

This week's stats:

Can’t believe that it’s 2019.  Also can’t believe that I stopped blogging halfway through 2018.  I pay for this url; there’s no excuse not to update the blog. Honestly, I got lazy. I got a puppy.  I traveled to South Africa. I got low iron. I took time off. It was a whirlwind, but I had time I could have set aside to write about my running.  Whenever I don’t do make time for something, I think to myself: Get it together; you studied for your masters while working full-time so you can ALWAYS make time for anything you’re passionate about.  

And now I’m making time to write and I want to be consistent about it.  This year is exciting because I’m going to run my second ever marathon major - the Boston Marathon!  After consulting several runners and coaches I deeply respect, I decided to do Boston over Grandmas. If I don’t do it this year, who knows how long it will take me to get to the start line in Hopkinton.  

Most people start training for Boston on January 1.  I think that’s a recipe for disaster - specifically: peaking in March and burning out by the time April rolls around.  To prevent that from happening, in January I’m reducing my mileage a tad, hopping into some speedier stuff with the Strava Track Club while still doing hard long runs of 14-16 miles with my training partners.   I’ll take a mini down week with about 3 days off before kicking off my short 10-week marathon cycle on February 4th. This approach will help me mentally distance myself from thinking about Boston by hopping in workouts with the sole purpose to pace my teammates and to have fun.  

I started the pacing duties this week, first with Shal on Wednesday in a wave tempo, on Saturday with Marissa for 2 mile repeats and again on Sunday with Shal and Rachel for a long run.  Not having a real plan makes it less formal, more fun and seemingly effortless. I’m really looking forward to the next 3 weeks of January!