It's Been a Long Time Since I Came Around

What motivates me to come here and write is when I am doing something I love- training. Training requires a race and a goal. Sometimes the race is the goal, sometimes they're separate. I committed to running the Texas Independence Relay a little while back, during a night out with my girl frunners. It's a 203 mile relay from Bastrop to the San Jacinto monument. I don't know which legs I'll run, yet, but according to the site teams of 12 end up running about 17 total miles each. I'm really excited about that weekend so I've been leery of signing up for any other races that might cause me to get injured again.

Over the past week or two I've decided to go ahead and run the Rock n Roll Dallas half marathon again. It was my first, last year, and still stands as my PR (hopefully just due to hot weather and injury standing in the way of better times at the other races). It's the weekend before TIR. It seems like almost every runner I know is going to be running RnR and I know I'd be sad to not race that day. I'm going for my sub-2 goal that day, assuming the weather is right and my body is healthy. I've been reading Jeff Galloway's book and I came across the training plan to go sub-2 using his run/walk/run method. I think my increase in mileage and speed at the same time are what caused my stress fracture, so as of right now I'm thinking of following his distance recommendations (longest long run is 17 miles) but not doing the speedwork. That will also shorten the number of weeks in the plan to exactly what I have left between now and the race. I'm hopeful that run/walk/run will keep me off the injured list and allow me to run the faster pace that I'll need comfortably because I'll have the walk breaks. We'll see- since I'm not following the plan in it's entirety I know I may not be ready to go sub-2. Part of me just holds onto my sub-par training for last year's Dallas RnR and the fact that my time was only 9 minutes over 2 hours.

But then I started thinking (at about 3am today)... I'd run 17 miles before the half. Many novice marathon training plans take you to 20 miles for the longest run. It seems like a shame to take myself to 17 and not go get my marathon. The Oklahoma City Marathon is April 29th. It's within driving distance, a little farther north so maybe a little cooler than Dallas at that time... although who knows, the end of April could be hot or cold here or there. But timing seems like it could work.

• Run 17
• Taper next weekend
• Race the half
• Run TIR
• Run 20
• Taper for 2 weeks
• Run my first marathon (NO time goals. Promise.)

The marathon is super tentative. I'm hoping sell out is not a concern and I can make the decision to register a month or less before the race.