HAPPY NEW YEAR, Y'ALL!! Here's hoping you are bright-eyed & bushy-tailed & ready to greet the day/month/year. :D
(And because I am told it is the order of the day -- If you're looking for a painfully earnest, dewy-eyed goal-setting post, allow me to refer you here. That's kind of all I've got, dudes.)
Friends, I run for one reason and one reason alone, and that is for the purpose of racing the shite out of my local events. So let us talk races.
I have a few picked out for this year so far:
- Jan. 18 - Foster City Ten Miler. Essentially, this race is pinch-hitting for the half marathon I really wanted to get in between Thanksgiving & NVM. On the plus side, though, woo-hoo! Trying out a new distance!
Mar. 1 - Napa Valley Marathon. This is the race I had to defer last year because of my stress fracture & am fake-racing just for like, the experience or exposure or whatever. The goal here is not to run a particularly fast race, but really just to finish at a slightly-faster-than comfortable pace (80% is the number I've been throwing around) & feel like it did not suck.
May 17 - Bay to Breakers 12K. This is the iconic SF race that I got a sweet internet deal on on Halloween. It's too short for me to actually be in shape to kick ass at while marathon training, but hopefully I'll still be able to beat all the drunk and/or naked people.*
*(No but some of the naked people are hella fast tho.)
Aug. 23 - Santa Rosa Marathon. Unfinished business. Kinda wanna blow the doors off, if my body cooperates. 'Nuff said.
I'm not ready to think much farther than August right now, but there are still a few stretches in the first part of the year where I'd kind of like to get a race in if I can. It's probably not practical to hit all of these, but here are some others I'm considering:
- Apr. 12 - Santa Cruz Half Marathon. I ran the 10K here back in 2011 when I was still pretty shitty at 10K's. Part of me wants revenge for that, but knowing that I'll still be marathon training in April & not in shape to run a great 10K, I'm thinking I may go run the half instead & see what happens. It's a solid six weeks after NVM, so I could conceivably be in not-that-terrible shape, all things considered.
June 27 - Pride Run 5K. I've run this race almost every year since I've lived here. Actually in 2011 I ran the 10K which I will probably never, ever, EVER do again, but the 5K is not awful and it's for a good cause, so why not?
July 12 - Jungle Run Half Marathon. This was my first half marathon EVER back in the day (2:16 baby!!) & ever since then I've kinda had an inkling to go back & give it another shot (now that I, like, train or whatever). It tends to be on the warm side so I wouldn't expect a PR or anything, but worst case I could always treat it like I did SFM2H this past summer & do it as part of a long run.
Call me a curmudgeon if you want but I'm not setting any 2015 Goals And ResolutionsTM. In the past I've sometimes set goals like PRing certain distances, but at this point I think I've sort of picked all the low-hanging fruit there & from now on PRs are going to be incredibly hard-fought battles where everything has to go perfectly, including a lot of things I can't control.
Another popular NY goal/resolution I've seen a lot of is participating in or completing a particular distance or type of event, but for now I feel like I've done pretty much everything I have any desire to do athletic-wise in terms of just finishing & there's nothing crazy & different really calling to me right now.
If I were going to "resolve" to do anything running-wise this year, it would just mainly be continuing to do all the stuff I can control, & do it better & better & more & more consistently (sleep, strength train, eat well, do the long runs, etc.), but to me those are ongoing things I'm more or less constantly working on all the time, so it doesn't really make a lot of sense to call them resolutions or goals.
Okay fine. Pie-in-the-sky, magical dream world? I would totally finish this year with a sub-3:30 marathon, a half PR, and over 2,015 miles, and I'm certainly planning to do everything in my power to make it happen. But I also know (from experience, sigh) that life happens & there's a lot that I can't control, so if none of it happens, the world will not end. (Honestly, I'd just settle for not being sidelined/in PT for months at a time.)
Happy 2015, all!!
Ten milers are great - one of my favorite distances. You can treat it like a half-marathon, but skip the "slow early miles" entirely. Less endurance than distance stuff but less pain than a 10k!
ReplyDeleteExcited that we have 2 of the same races on our calendars - Foster City and Bay to Breakers! I don't think you're a curmudgeon for not setting goals or resolutions -- which, by the way, you already did, just a few months early. ;) Happy New Year!
ReplyDeleteBay to Breakers looks like such a great race. Sadly it's a bit far from Southern California for a casual race but maybe I'll try to work it into 2016 with a post-race detour to wine country...
ReplyDelete10 miles is my favourite distance! You'll love the FC course. So flat (apart from a kicker of a mini-hill at the end that will destroy you).
ReplyDeleteI'm a sucker for NY resolutions but I get where you're coming from.
Ay, unfinished business with the marathon. Of the few that you're considering, the two half marathons sound like they would fit in well with the training schedule - perhaps you can race Santa Cruz and use Jungle Run as a long-run segment during the warmer months (insofar as the Bay Area gets warm and muggy)?
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