Fall plans 2014

Boy it takes a long time to recover from a marathon. Yeesh. I mean, I was expecting it to take some time, but still. Although the DOMS faded quickly, my legs have felt generally shitty for the last few weeks for a bunch of different reasons - hip bursitis, something weird with my hip flexor, a quad strain, and on and on and on. And my sciatica has been acting up, which is always super fun.

I finally feel like I've turned the corner and I'm at about 98%, although it's possible I'm just delusional from the new DOMS from the Ride for Heart yesterday. In a fit of brilliance I scheduled my follow up with the sports doctor for this morning. "So, how are you feeling?" Well, everything is pretty sore but that's because of the 75k I rode on my bike yesterday, so good luck figuring out if there's anything still wrong with my hips! DUH. He rolled his eyes at me, checked my hips, and said I'm good to go as long as I take it easy for a few weeks, build slowly, and cut back if things hurt. So I'll be keeping things light and easy for next couple of weeks, will probably mix in some cycling, and a 5k race on Saturday but let's not talk about that right now shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Bikes: kind of fun. I may or may not have been looking at road bikes on Kijiji last night. 

Naturally, when doing less running, that gives me more time to think about the next training cycle. Which leads to goal setting and planning. I'm not officially training at this point, as I haven't registered for anything yet, and I want to see how I feel over the next week or so once my legs recover from the ride (my glutes are so not happy today).

In all the free time I had after the marathon, I replaced the backsplash in my kitchen, which I am insanely proud of so here, admire it. Amazing what you can find time to do when you aren't running 80k a week.

The main thing I'd like to achieve right now is a sub 1:50 half. I ran 1:51:19 at Chilly, so a sub 1:50 is definitely within reach.

September 6th: MEC Burlington 15k. This will essentially be a long tempo run; first 10k at half marathon pace, whatever I have left for the last 5k. If I can nail this, I'll be in great shape to go sub 1:50 at...

Sept 21st: Oakville half marathon. First shot at sub 1:50. I ran the 10k here last year, it's close to home, the course is largely flat and has lots of shade (important for a September half - sorry, Milton, your route is WAY too exposed for me). Have I mentioned how much I hate running in the heat? Good thing I've got a summer of training ahead of me!

Hopefully I hit the goal here and the rest of the fall is gravy. But if not...

Oct 4th: 25k Run for the Toad. I plan to take this race seriously - it won't just be a fun run (although I expect it to be pretty damn fun!). Assuming good health, I want to run it aggressively and see how it goes.

Nov 2nd: Road 2 Hope half marathon. There's enough time between races that I should be able to peak for this one and really bring my half PB down. Hopefully the 1:50 will be out of the way, so I can just take advantage of the net downhill and knock a few minutes off whatever I do in Oakville.

I have a few other things planned over the summer (maybe a trail race, the Colleen Lantz memorial run), but these are my four main goal races. I'll be running the Moon in June 5k on Saturday with zero expectations, but I will of course write a race report. 5ks always make for the best, most curse-laden race reports.