PLANNED MILES: Who cares
COMPLETED MILES: I dunno
Like Missy Elliot once said (sometimes) you gotta flip and reverse it.
In last week’s “training” update, I mentioned that I was having a lot of trouble finding my WHY in regard to training for the One City Marathon.
I have to give a shout-out to my readers who provided some great advice about losing and (more important) rebuilding one’s motivation for running and taking much-needed breaks from running when life hits you hard. In terms of my decision to run or defer, most folks recommended going the deferral route. From that advice, I decided to take the best of both worlds. Instead of running the full marathon, I’ve decided to change my registration from the full to the half marathon for the following reasons:
will still have a running goal for the spring:
I can be pretty hard on myself whenever I cancel half or full marathons for reasons other than injury. Changing my registration option will still give me something to look forward to in March. Hey, running something (13.1 miles) is better than running nothing.
Low-hanging fruit:
Having worked in Higher Education with a focus on DEI for the past five years, I kind of have grown to hate this term, but I think it’s fitting here. Although my training motivation for the full marathon has been kind of low, I have been doing “longish” weekend runs ranging from 8 to 12 miles. Ok, I haven’t done a long run in two weeks, but the distance is still there . . . somewhere. Since I’m already (more or less) at the half marathon distance, I can use this month and a half to focus a bit more on speedwork and strength training. Oh, I’m gonna add really getting on with a nutrition plan. Part of my reduced motivation has occurred because I have gained some weight over the past few months. Simply put, this weight gain does not make me feel like a runner.
It was cheap:
Changing my registration was only 20 bucks. I would have preferred a freebie since I’m going from a higher distance to a lower distance, but I think those days are long gone.
Concluding thoughts:
Even after changing my registration option and writing about it, it feels like a HUGE weight has been lifted off of my shoulders. While I’m not a huge fan of quitting (one of the reasons why grad school became a hot mess for me), I guess sometimes you have to take a few steps back to move forward.
One other thing. In these parts, the Shamrock Marathon and Half Marathon are super popular. I wonder if it would be crazy to register for the Shamrock (technically Anthem) Half Marathon which is a couple of weeks after the One City (Half) Marathon? Would running two half marathons in one month count as running one full marathon?
TRAINING PLAN:
Goals for the week:
-Simple, start running!
-Come up with a 1.5-month training plan for my upcoming half marathon.
-Up my intermittent and nutrition game. For the last couple of weeks, I have been fasting for 14hrs, I guess I crank it up a little and start my 16hr fasts.
-Find a race to volunteer for. I loved this suggestion that was made by one of my readers. I will admit volunteering to hand out bibs for one NYC Marathon made me that much more excited to run it the following year.
-Update my Spotify running playlists.