Plans and Such

It's been almost two weeks since the half marathon, and I haven't run 1 mile. Nor have I biked. In fact, I've not done much of anything except worked. Working in, not working out. :(  This is not exactly how I had wanted it to go.

Part of the problem was work (many consecutive 10 billable hour days). Every day like clockwork I get a bad tension headache in my neck and jaw. I'm tired of it! (Ironically, a run would probably help get rid of it!) The other part was motivation. I get pretty sad/down after races as eventful as a half, where there are weeks invested in training and planning for it. This one was no exception. I finished, was happy and disappointed all at the same time (which was weird and I still feel weird about), and was left feeling pretty empty with the question in my head every day: now what?

I guess now I'm trying to address it. Now what?

First things first - It's time to start running again! I need to start running again. This has been a long rest period; I'm sure my IT band is fine by now. Plus, I have a fun new GPS watch to play with! I partly bought that for motivation, but it didn't have quite as big of a spark as I had hoped it would. I am still looking forward to using its features and having more freedom on my routes again.

Second, plans/aka motivation... My eyes are on the Pig. I go back and forth about full or half. I feel like I'm copping out by not doing the full. I've done a full and would still like to run more full marathons. And this is the home town marathon! But.... then I think about how I want to get faster. The Pig quite possibly could be a slower marathon than Columbus was for me, and I don't ever want to do one slower than that. I would need to know I could do better, which means I'd have to train for pace at the distance rather than just the distance. That's scary when you're a mortal. Back to the half... it is such a more manageable distance! It's still an endurance challenge, but nothing like a full. I know I could keep improving my speed and would have a great time working on that. I feel like it would be very rewarding. Back to the marathon... I could do one later in the year, after the Pig is done. I could aim for Columbus again in the fall - that is such a great race.  Hmmmmm...decisions!

I think for now I'm going to break things up in chunks. From now until the end of the year, I want to nail down a routine, which will include running, biking (indoors) and lifting/core. When I think about running, I get pretty excited thinking about getting faster. So I think I'm going to start there for now and see what happens. It's time to do some real work!