Next Marathon

Oh, hello there! I guess I forgot to officially post the news that I decided to switch my goal marathon race from Chicago to the Cal International Marathon. It was actually an easy decision once I thought about it a little. More than anything, I just felt as though my confidence in my fitness level was not where it needed to be in order to pull off something spectacular in Chicago. Plus, CIM has a great course (literally in my back yard), and I know a lot of fast women that will be attempting to get their OT B standard qualifier there.

Let's just hope the weather is better than last year.

CIM 2012

Since making the decision, my workouts have gone very well, and my training has been consistent, with my mileage in the mid 70s. I feel like I'm developing a nice base that will take me through the next few months of tough training. I have long wanted to have a group to train with and finally realized a month or so ago that I could do something about this. I am lucky to have a group of fast female friends in the area that like to train hard. I realized that a big part of the problem was not having a workout coordinator. So, I took on that role and we have actually met up for several runs so far. A few of these gals will be running CIM, so I see some great workouts ahead for us. Even if we don't do the workouts together, having someone to meet is so helpful.

Starting up my coaching business has had some good carry over benefits for my running. One thing I currently dig is having my training plan (and my athlete's plans) and training log on the interwebs. You can see what they look like on my coaching website. I currently use Google Docs for this, but I plan to switch over to iCloud once they get done with their beta testing and have a fully-operational version of Numbers up and running. I am currently testing out Apple's new web-based apps and I do really like them. I just am unable to share them right now with my athletes, friends and my coach. Google docs does a fine job for now. What I especially like is being able to change training plans on the fly when things change and have those changes automatically shared. This morning, I was able to have a chat session with an athlete while we looked at the plan together. I was able to make adjustments to the race schedule on the spot. Done. So cool. I also like being able to share my training plan with my friends, so they know what I will be up to and can plug in to my workouts when they want.

I do have a number of races coming up (races in bold are focus races):

8/24  Race for the Arts 5k
9/8 Buffalo Stampede 10 mile
10/6 Urban Cow 5k
10/20 Humboldt Redwoods 1/2 Marathon
11/10 Clarksburg Country Run 1/2 Marathon
11/28 Run to Feed the Hungry 5k
12/8 CIM!!!!

This is a full race calendar, especially for me, but I am happy about that. I need to get back in the swing of racing and learn to harness the excitement of race day to maximize my performance. All of the reading I'm doing about the mental aspects of performance is making me realize just how important this is!

CIM 2013, here I come!