Onwards & Upwards

Call me pessimistic but I have this feeling like 2017 is maybe going to be one of the most horrific years in quite sometime. I hope I'm wrong, but right now I don't have a whole lot of faith. Which means that in addition to helping fight the raging dumpster fire that is threatening to destroy all that is good in this country in whatever small way I can, I'll probably also need to do a lot of running and racing in order to keep from shooting myself in the face my sanity & spirits up.

First, let us talk DREAMS and WISHES. (See how I'm not calling it 'goals'?)

What I'm most excited to chase in 2017 are PRs in the half marathon & 10K. My private deal with myself was that if I BQ'd at CIM 2016 with enough a cushion to maybe actually get into the race, I would put marathons aside until it was time to train for Boston, and if I didn't, I wouldn't run another until at least CIM 2017. Well I DID BQ, and unless something crazy happens, an 8:00+ margin should get me in as long as I don't screw up the process (not impossible). So no marathons for me in 2017.

My current 10K and half PRs, on the other hand, are nearly old enough for school. Having just PR'd the marathon by a hefty margin gives me hope that perhaps my days of running personal bests aren't all behind me just yet, and besides, I really miss racing the shorter stuff (which I'm better at anyway).

Lately I've been falling down the rabbit hole of the Hansons' training blog, which is fascinating. Last week I ran across a post called "Just Ran My Marathon, Now What? Beginning the Process of Long-Term Planning". There are a few different categories (finished first marathon; BQ'd but have an awkward gap between now & then; had a breakthrough race; DNF'd/DNS'd), & the part I particularly latched onto was this:

"The marathon makes you very strong. Your aerobic abilities will be through the roof and you’ll be strong. That’s not going away, even after your recovery time. It makes for a perfect time to bounce back with either
• A dedicated 8-10 week speed session that will help improve your overall speed.
• Or a dedicated 10-12 week half marathon training segment.

Either way, you’ll improve your fitness from another angle. This will ultimately take your overall fitness to a new level and this will only help you in whatever direction you go next."

Thank you, Hansons, for telling me exactly what I wanted to hear.

Next, the processes/systems. HOW are those things going to happen?

Good news! In a way, I think it's pretty simple. As Phoebe Wright says, "Let’s talk about the main things that are the main things: 1. The work you put in over the last few months. 2. Your mindset. THAT’S IT." Putting in the work worked out pretty well for me this past fall, which I think is part of what allowed me to get into the right mindset, so I think I'm just going to stick with that.

ONE LEVEL DOWN: What is the work?

• Get back into (and follow) a solid, periodized strength plan. I did okay with that this past year, but I want to do a better job of actively periodizing things so that I'm not like O NOES I GOT TOO BUSY, AH WELL IT'S RACE WEEK NEXT WEEK ANYWAY. I really like some of the New Rules of Lifting for Women workouts (even though I will probably never do them exactly as written or in the exact order as written) because they incorporate so much serious core/hips/glutes work (squats, deadlifts, lunges, push-ups, ab work, one-legged stuff) and they are HARD. I really do wonder how much of staying healthy this past year was due to all that.
• Follow the training plan. This is the easy part. No question, it is worth every penny I pay RunCoach to enter my race dates, open my browser window each day, & git 'er done. Zero thinking involved.
• Up the mileage juuuuust a bit. There's just no getting around it; if you want to get faster, the easiest thing you can possibly do is spend more time running (within reason, OBVIOUSLY). This last fall I got super comfortable with 50+ weeks, so I'm a bit curious to see what could happen if I try pushing that envelope ever so slightly. For the first half of the year I'd be perfectly happy staying at more or less the same mileage I ran for CIM, and then in the second half of the year I'd like to shoot for bringing the average up by maybe 5-10 miles per week & maybe peaking in the 65-75 range. This is pretty ambitious for me, so it will only work if I'm consistent about the strength stuff AND ALSO doing all my prehab regularly AND ALSO getting enough sleep. (ie, it's not just about finding another 20-30 minutes in the day; it's about finding, like, another hour+ in the day.) Eventually, I need a solid plan for this stuff & don't actually have one yet. Baby steps.

  Speaking of wich...

• Effing sleep. Now THIS is the hard part. As running goes, literally nothing harder.

So.

AMAZING TRAINING SECRETS REVEALED!! Just $19.99 + S&H
Just kidding, you should probably just buy some Nuun or get some
compression socks or something.

Let us now get down to the fun stuff! What am I actually doing in 2017????

I'm glad you asked.

(I assume somebody asked, if only in their head.)

January: Get back on a plan (vis-à-vis RunCoach). Start the workouts up again, but nothing too crazy.

February: Gradually build mileage & work up to longer/harder workouts. Also I'm thinking about running Bay Breeze 10K on 2/12 if I happen to be in town & am feeling up to it. No pressure on myself, really; I know there's a bunch of gravel, it can be windy, and I will only have about 6 weeks of training under my belt. But I kind of love running 10Ks, and it will make me feel good to see by how much I can beat my time from the same race a year ago, when I was just coming back from the stress fracture and beginning to get back into racing shape.

March: Race before it gets stupid hot everywhere!

• 3/12 - Shamrock'n Half (Sacramento). I'm signed up for this already thanks to an early bird discount. Another SRA race that friends have done in the past & loved. I kind of just want to see where I am in terms of racing the half after stacking a couple months of 10K/half focused training on top of a solid marathon cycle.
• 3/26 - Wildflower 10K (Morgan Hill). Maybe? This would be a new one for me, but it looks like a solid road 10K not too far away. I've never raced a 10K that soon after a half so I have no idea how well that would even work and maybe it's a terrible idea all around.

April: Train a bunch more. I'm not planning to race in April because I will be traveling a lot for work & want to have enough time for a solid training block after Shamrock'n Half.

May: I have no idea what's happening this month. I'm trying to schedule a vacation for either the first or second week, but I could totally do something in the second half of the month. My coaches mentioned Bay to Breakers but to be honest I'm not really feeling it. So we'll see. On the other hand, there's...

• 5/29 - Marin Memorial Day 10K (Marin). Marin is a fast, flat, certified course but somehow I've never felt inspired to actually race on Memorial Day. Is 2017 the year??

June: Mostly recover, maybe a bit of racing just for fun, like...

• 6/24 - SF Pride Run 5K (SF), no pressure. I love this race. The course is not the fastest but it's cheap, close to home, & for a good cause.

July: A couple of maybes that have caught my eye:

• 7/4 - Kenwood 3K (Sonoma, CA). This would be the shortest distance I've raced since high school so I might totally suck at it. On the other hand, #defaultPR!!
• 7/22 - SF PrideMeet 5K/10K (Chabot College). I have kind of wanted to run this for YEARS but the timing has never worked out. As an adult, you don't get too many chances to race 5K/10K on a track, so I'm keeping it as an option.

August: Probably just train, train, train.

September: Register for the Boston Marathon (God willing & the crick don't rise); run a little 10K!

• 9/3 - Race to the End of Summer 10K (San Jose). There was a super cheap re-run sign up right after the 2016 race, so I figured what the heck & signed up again.

October: Run a sick half. This would probably be my fall 'A' race, so targeting something on the fast side.

• 10/6 - Rock 'N Roll San Jose (San Jose). I know, I hate Competitor Group too. But this is pretty much the fastest half happening nearby in the fall, and you have to give it to them that they know how to do logistics.
• 10/22 - Folsom Breakout Blues (Folsom). My soul would much much MUCH rather run this race, but it is a bit later, a bit farther, & just a bit more hilly. But keeping it out there as an option.

November: Get my base training on. Rackin' up them miles.

December: Start training for Boston

HOW 'BOUT YOU??? What'cha up to in 2017?

Process Goals & New Year's Resolutions

Hi, hello, if you have posted a blog entry recently, I have not seen it yet because I have been too busy managing the category 5 hurricane of love and togetherness and holiday madhouse magic that is the last weeks of December.

I was looking forward to reporting that we had emerged unscathed but was then laid low by some sort of nasty upper respiratory nonsense that is currently making it kind of hard to make my life go. This week was supposed to be the week of getting back to FINISHING ALL THE WORK and RUNNING ALL THE MILES and LIFTING ALL THE WEIGHTS and COOKING ALL THE MEALS and generally adulting the shit out of my life but it has instead been the week of finishing some of the work and feeding myself however I can, when I even feel like eating, and desperately snatching at any extra hours of sleep I can eek out of the day. Thankfully, when I can manage virtually nothing else, I can almost always lace up my shoes & get out the door so at least the miles are still happening.

("Wait, you're running when you're sick??" Yes, I use the neck rule, and also the less-easily-quantified-but-perhaps-more-legit 'Do I feel like it or not' rule, and they have never steered me wrong. Running almost always makes me feel better as long as I want to do it.)

All this has put me behind in many aspects of life, including writing scintillating blog posts for my millions of adoring readers, which is why you're getting this one now instead of a week ago. So, sorry. Hopefully it's not too late as to be completely useless (or, at least not any more useless than usual).

WITHOUT FURTHER ADO...

It is the New Year, which of course means lots of people making resolutions to change and hopefully improve things about their lives. To be honest, the New Year's Resolution has never called to me, mostly because the timing seems a little arbitrary. I'm all about committing to Do The Thing to make one's life more generally awesome; I'm just not the type of person who can wait for a particular day to start. But I do understand, I think, the appeal of all the numbers changing at once & having a kind of temporal blank slate. If that timing works for you, rock on with your bad self.

On the other hand, there is something that's always bothered me about the way people make NYRs and the types of resolutions that are most popular, and thinking more in terms of process goals than outcomes lately has I think clarified for me exactly what it is. And that's that, although resolutions come in a range of shapes and sizes, it seems like many of them revolve around perceived shortcomings, around shame and guilt, around not being good enough in some way or another.

This saddens me. In a way, it reminds me a lot of the Scott Adams quote I shared in the Process Goals post:

"If your goal is to [accomplish x], you will spend every moment until you reach the goal—if you reach it at all—feeling as if you were short of your goal. In other words, goal-oriented people exist in a state of nearly continuous failure that they hope will be temporary."

Ie, if your New Year's Resolution is to lose 10 pounds, there's often an implicit assumption that your current weight isn't good enough, that you're not skinny enough or small enough or don't look enough like someone else, but once you lose those 10 pounds then you finally will be good/skinny/attractive enough and live happily in your body ever after.

Or if your resolution is to achieve y professional goal or level or what have you, the implication that your current accomplishments or position or whatever isn't good enough, but if you can finally do y, you will finally be happy in your job.

Or if your resolution is to run a sub-xx:xx whatever, the implication that you're not fast enough but once you can run that time, then you will be fast enough and impressive enough and all will finally be well in your running life.

Basically, it feels like the starting condition is "failure" or at best inadequacy, and the resolution is set up such that you remain a failure unless and until you achieve it.

I think this can be damaging because a) this type of goal setting (and, by extension, resolution setting) rarely works, and b) it all kind of leads back to "who and what I am right now is Not Good Enough and doing x will fix that." Like, if you can finally manage The Thing, then you will finally shed the yucky crusty skin of the Old You and unveil a shiny, fancy, New-And-Improved You, the real you that you were always meant to be, and life will finally--FINALLY--reach the levels of awesome you always knew were out there waiting for you.

But here's the thing.

They're not.

The awesome and the peace and the true happiness is not out there waiting for you once you finally Do The Thing.

If I had more time right now, I would google up some references for you, but this is a real thing people have studied--the idea that once you accomplish x, you'll finally be happy--and it just isn't true. Yes, finally achieving something you've been fixated on or striving toward for a while often gives a short-term boost in happiness or life satisfaction, but it almost never lasts, and people tend to return to baseline levels of happiness and satisfaction pretty quickly. So a lot of times, this type of goal setting or resolution ends in

a) not accomplishing The Thing, thereby remaining in a state of failure, or

b) finally accomplishing The Thing, feeling happy/satisfied/at peace for a while, and then returning to the same baseline feeling as before. ("Well, losing 10 pounds / finally running that sub-4 marathon / buying a house didn't completely change my life the way I thought it would, BUT I bet if I lose 5 more pounds / run a sub-3:50 marathon / have a kid, THEN I'll be happy/satisfied/at peace.")

Guess what.

Whatever the discomfort or feeling of not being enough is, it is not going away through Achieving Things. No, not even healthy, good, positive, productive things. There is no shiny, fancy, New-And-Improved You out there just waiting to be unveiled by Achieving The Thing. There's just you, with all your goodness and badness and human-ness, and s/he is JUST. FINE. AS. IS.

The awesome and the peace and the happiness? You can have it. But it's not going to come from finally Doing The Thing. No; you can have it just as you already are. Really.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying people should never have goals or dreams or stuff they want to accomplish or that having those things is somehow categorically bad. And I'm not saying it's necessarily bad to think, "You know, x area has always been a challenge for me & I think I'd like to work on that a bit." And I'm definitely not suggesting we all settle or be fine with mediocrity or never strive to improve and achieve amazing things. (After all, that's kind of one of the greatest thrills of being human.)

Just, maybe think really hard about why you want to accomplish a thing and what you hope to get out of it, and be really honest with yourself about whether it's coming from a place of "You know, I'd like to improve at x / Hey, x would be super cool!" vs. a place of "x thing about me is wrong/lacking/broken/not good enough/needs fixing and I won't really feel okay with myself until things are different." There's a difference between wanting something, and feeling like you need it in order to be okay with yourself.

(I know about this. I did this to myself, about running and so many other things, over and over again, for a long time. In some ways, it's an ongoing battle.)

So, what if for New Year's Resolutions we maybe stopped with thinking about how we're not good enough and all the ways we need fixing and improving and all the stuff we maybe feel ashamed and guilty about and instead said, "I and my life are not perfect but still actually pretty great already, what would make my life even BIGGER and RICHER and FULLER?"

Perhaps taking a fun class and learning something new? Not because "I am lonely and isolated and socially broken and that needs fixing" but because it will add richness and depth to your life?

Perhaps trying a new fruit or vegetable every week or month or whatever, not because "I am an unhealthy bad eater and that is shameful and needs fixing" but because trying new things and discovering new things to like and enjoy is good times?

Perhaps convincing a friend to join you once a week or whatever for a fun physical activity, not because "I am not active/skinny/fit enough and that needs fixing," but because it's nice to hang out with a friend you maybe wouldn't see otherwise and because it feels good to move your body in the world?

Or maybe, "Yes, jerkbrain, I hear all the stuff about me that you think is bad and shameful and not good enough, but maybe we ignore all that this year and try to make life more awesome in one of these other ways that is completely not related to that stuff at all"?

Of course, sometimes people do make New Year's Resolutions to address serious health concerns like addiction, substance abuse, managing chronic health conditions, etc. because those are things that DO legitimately need fixing, ideally sooner rather than later, because the consequences of not fixing them can be so disastrous. And come to it, I think in those situations you have to do whatever works for you. But I also know that there is quite a long history in the world of 1) outcome-based goals (say, quitting smoking) not really working unless there is some serious planning and ongoing support in place, and 2) shame and guilt rarely being productive emotions. So sometimes when I hear of people making NYRs like "quit smoking" or "actually follow x diet my doctor has put me on for a diagnosed condition," I can't help wondering if a New Year's Resolution is really the right caliber tool for that particular job. {shrug}

Yes. So. TO SUMMARIZE:

You're probably not perfect but prooobbbably still pretty great.

You don't need 'fixing.'

You won't magically be happy/satisfied/at peace with yourself when you finally do the Big Thing you for some reason feel you need to do.

Go forth in 2017 and do something that makes your awesome life/self that much more awesome.

:)

(Repost:) Please Stop with the Fitness Tips for the Holidays

(It is that time of year again, so reposting this seemed appropriate. Enjoy. :) )

* * *

It looks like a smile, but it's really a scream for help. PUT THE FREE WEIGHTS DOWN, CINDY.

Seriously. You are making the rest of us so, so sad for you.

I don't know how to tell you this, but every time you start listing practical tips for staying fit & healthy during the holidays, everyone is laughing at you and definitely not taking notes.

Here is a list of real-ass "helpful holiday fitness tips" I have actually heard or read over the past week or so that have made me throw up a bit in my mouth with embarrassment for those doling them out:

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

In addition to maintaining your normal exercise schedule, squeeze in an extra workout or two whenever you can. You know, in all that extra free time you have around the holidays. Bring your free weights to office meetings. Do laps around the cell phone lot as you wait for loved ones at the airport. The possibilities are endless. (I prefer wine aerobics and cookie yoga, myself.)

After a midday holiday meal, convince your friends & family to go for a fun, festive post meal jog or walk. GODDDDD please don't be this person. Please. You want to go for a fun, festive calorie-burning walk/run? By all means go for it. But please don't attempt to browbeat the rest of us who kind of just want to sit on our asses and shoot the shit with a glass of whiskey with people we only ever get to see once a year. Don't be that guy/gal.

Before you go to a party, decide ahead of time to limit yourself to three bites, three cookies, your three favorite foods, etc. and stick to it. Yes, limit yourself. To three bites, or three cookies, your three favorite foods, three foods of each color, three plates of food, three foods that remind you of each person at the party, three vats of artificially colored cookie frosting, etc. Again, the possibilities are endless. You do you.

Buy a low-fat, low-sugar eggnog and skip the alcohol to save calories per cup. Or, you could skip directly to stabbing yourself in the throat. :D

Enlist a fitness-minded friend or family member to be your holiday exercise buddy! Look. Those of us who want any kind of exercise buddy probably already have one. Those of us who don't want you to stop talking about this because you're making it weird for everyone.

Instead of baking cookies or playing board games, pass the time with an active pursuit like snowshoeing, hiking, or building snowmen or igloos. Recent studies show that holiday board games are definitely, DEFINITELY a leading cause of the Obesifying Of America^TM. Probably also terrorism. GET OUT THOSE SNOWSHOES, PEOPLE.

Instead of mulled red wine, make mulled cider. You save the calories not only from the alcohol in the wine, but also from the added sugar, since cider is naturally sweet. You know what makes cider 'naturally sweet'? FUCKING SUGAR. See also: Stabbing oneself in the throat.

Instead of dark meat slathered in gravy, choose lower-fat white meat without the skin and enjoy it with just a drizzle of gravy made with defatted pan juices, dry white wine, and low-sodium chicken broth. If you come to my holiday dinner and start talking about 'defatted pan juices,' we are so over. SO. OVER.

Bring your own healthy snacks to the holiday party. Yes, please totally be that sad person sitting in the corner eating celery sticks and homemade GMO-free hummus out of your sad little tupperware while you gaze longingly at your Three Favorite Foods. It won't be weird or awkward for ANYONE, TRUST ME.

Skip the baking; you probably eat more cookies while baking. Fuck that noise. You wanna bake? Fucking bake. YOU BAKE THE SHIT OUT OF THOSE FESTIVE HOLIDAY COOKIES AND EAT AS MANY AS YOU WANT. You baddass motherfucker, you.

Invite holiday vacation visitors to join you at the gym or a favorite exercise class. No. NO. NOOOOOO. Trust me; they do not not NOT want you to do this. HOLIDAY. VACATION. Look it up.

Do some yard work. What?

Lace up your sneakers and powerwalk between holiday errands at the mall. This is definitely not the saddest, most depressing thing related to exercise I've ever heard. Definitely, definitely not. (See also: stabbing in the throat.)

When traveling for the holidays, bring along a favorite fitness DVD and yoga mat. ARE. YOU. JOKING.

Eat and chew slowly. Take a second to savor each bite of baked brie or scoop of spiced nuts! Oh, so it's not enough that I'm packing my own fitness DVD and drinking sad teetotaler eggnog and powerwalking the mall between murdering children errands, now I have to monitor my chew-rate? IS THERE SOME KIND OF APP FOR THAT???!?!?

Turn away from temptation by facing away from the dessert spread. Don't worry, your chew-monitoring app probably also comes with DessertCompass^TM.

Choose a tall, skinny glass instead of a short, squat one; you'll drink less. Ha. Hahaha. Hahahahahaha wanna bet? (Or, maybe your chew-monitoring app also comes with CupChooser^TM.)

Sneak puréed veggies into baked goods in place of butter or oil. Bitch, I will straight-up cut you.

When baking [IF YOU MUST], try subbing half the flour with whole-wheat flour to increase the fiber, which fills you up faster & makes you feel fuller longer. You guys, sorry to be the killer of dreams, but I have spent way too much time sitting in a sports nutritionist's office and the whole wheat flour thing is 90% bullshit.

Stand up to "food pushers" -- Just say no, over and over and over again! Is this, like, the grown-up equivalent of the war on drugs? You would actually think it's that serious, based what WebMD has to say about the matter: "Despite your best laid plans, your holiday food goals can still go awry thanks to 'food pushers' – friends, family members, and co-workers who refuse to take 'no' for an answer when they're offering fattening treats. These are the people who, for whatever reason, seem to believe that their holiday celebration just isn't complete until they get you to give in to their food weaknesses.' YOU GUYS, DON'T GIVE IN TO THEIR FOOD WEAKNESSES, NOOOOOOO! J/K, you eat WHATEVER THE FUCK YOU WANT, you baddass motherfucker.

(RealTalk: OK, sure, I agree that this is SUPER weird behavior that some people definitely engage in, but it's not limited to the holidays, and part of being a grown-ass adult is learning how to politely say 'No thank you' with a lovely smile plastered on your face when a thing is not your jam. So, like, stop making it weird, WebMD. This is not about Teh Holidayzzz or getting fat.)

Instead of trying to squeeze exercise into your schedule, take other things out. Like parties. And alcohol. And baking. And free-form chewing. Basically, anything that might bring you joy for half a second.

Skip the savory finger foods, creamy dips, and fried canapés, help yourself to a small handful of nuts, reduced-fat cheese and fresh fruit, or chilled shrimp. I have an idea, what if you helped yourself to whatever the fuck you felt like eating and didn't make a big deal out of it?

Honestly, you want my tips for staying fit & healthy during the holiday (AND I THINK YOU DO)?

• Eat like a normal person most of the time & have a tasty holiday treat or two when you goddamn feel like it.
• Do your normal exercise when you can but do not feel bad & flagellate yourself if you are sometimes too busy kissing under the mistletoe or slapping under the slappy spider or just feel like today you're more interested in wine/pie/polishing off that whiskey advent calendar.
• Stop talking about it like it's a thing. Everyone is laughing at you.

Race Report: California International Marathon 2016 (Logistical Info)

(This post is about the all the logistical stuff you might be interested in if you're thinking of running CIM. If you want to read about how my race went, check out this post.)

Location: Folsom to Sacramento, CA

Date: Early December (Dec 4, 2016 this year)

Why run it? CIM is my favorite marathon to date, but the reason I was running it this year in particular is because when I had to skip the Santa Rosa Marathon in August 2015 due to a stress fracture, I'd signed up for CIM that December, thinking I'd let my leg heal, then keep building on my summer 2015 training, & be ready for a strong marathon in Sacramento. Alas, the healing took longer than I expected, and I lost a lot more fitness than I thought I would. I probably could have run CIM that year and finished just fine, but I didn't want to just finish, I wanted to run my best marathon ever. So instead I deferred my entry to 2016. (Pure luck that that was the first year they offered deferrals!)

Field Size:

6174 Finishers. The cap is 7,500 plus the guaranteed entries (see below) and CIM always sells out, so this number of finishers seems awfully low to me. I wonder if that is partly due to the new deferral option.

Pricing & Deadlines/sellout factor:

dotting i's, crossing t's, etc.

Race report here, ICYMI.

In case you're dying to know what went on BEHIND THE SCENES of Sunday's gift of a race, I figured I might as well tie all this up with a nice neat bow. Without further ado, I present to you Week 18.

* * *

Grand Total:

Race Report: California International Marathon 2016 (My Race)

Sooooo it turns out that if you get your act together and actually, like, train hard for stuff, pretty amazing things can happen.

WHO KNEW besides everyone?

On the plus side (at least as far as CIM was concerned), my talk in Monterey on Saturday was cancelled, which meant I was actually able to get some good sleep Friday night and get to Sacramento before dinner time. Don & I got to the expo on Saturday around 4pm, a little later than intended due to bad traffic, but still in plenty of time for me to grab my bib & shirt & hunt around for a pair of sunglasses (having left mine in Palm Springs a few weeks back).

HERE WE GO.........

Well, here we are.

As I said previously, it's been quite a ride, and no matter what happens on Sunday, I couldn't be happier with how this training cycle has gone. (I mean. I could have done without the knee drama in weeks 8 & 9. But still.) I feel like I've trained well & am prepared for a solid race, and the time will be whatever it will be.

However. I *do* have to make some decisions about pacing ahead of time, and I have to base that on *something*. (I'm not experienced enough at marathons to run them by feel.) My original thought was that as long as I was healthy and feeling reasonably good and the weather isn't doing anything ridiculous, it wasn't TOO audacious for me to go out with the 3:35 pace group (8:12/mile) and see how it feels. But, that was before I learned that apparently there is no longer a 3:35 pace group, only a 3:38 group & a 3:33 group, presumably to give people a shot at actually *getting in* to Boston should they qualify. SO NOW WHAT???

Eh, whatever. I'll probably start with the 3:38 group & then see how I feel & maybe work my way up (er, hopefully that's how it will work). My recent 10K and half marathon times back up a time somewhere in there, and my training has been simply head and shoulders stronger than the year I ran 3:36. There is definitely something kind of freeing about being able to look back on this training cycle and say, In this training cycle, I ran 35% more miles than ever before. I hit 50 miles or more in twice as many weeks. I did twice times as many runs of 16 miles or more. I did three times as many runs of 12 miles or more. I did longer and harder speed and tempo workouts than I've ever done before in my life. I did multiple workouts that scared the pants off of me.

Still, since I have never run faster than 3:36, I think it's probably smart to be a little conservative and plan to run no faster than 3:35 pace for at least the first half. If I'm feeling absolutely amazing, then maybe I can think about pushing just a tiny bit harder after that, and around 20-22 basically run as fast as I think I can manage.

But, I'm also completely prepared for 8:12 to feel just barely manageable start to finish. And also for it to feel too hard. I know I should be feeling pretty happy & comfortable for the first 13-18 miles, & if that's not what 3:35 pace brings on Sunday, I'm more than willing to back off a bit in the interest of running a negative split.

So, we'll see. At this point I've done all there is to do, training wise; all that's left is to remember to pack everything & not oversleep. D:

(BUT SERIOUSLY IF YOU HAVE ANY PACING SUGGESTIONS OR ADVICE I AM TOTALLY TAKING THEM.)

See you on the flip side of this thing!