Run All the Places

Everything in training can go right. You can run a PR in the half-marathon a few months before the full you are training for. You can hit your goal times in your workouts. You know you are as fit as  you can be on race day but the unexpected happens and your plan starts to crumble. How you deal with the unexpected becomes the real challenge. Having a marathon where everything went wrong and your plan didn't work can cause you to lose your mojo. I have learned that having a back up plan is how you take back your race, it is how you save your mojo. I lost mine a few years ago and it took me awhile to get it back. I have been chasing a not so secret marathon goal for a few years now, 3:15. It is a time I know that I am fully capable of hitting. I lost hope in ever achieving this goal for a few years because I lost focus. I lost the belief that I could do it. I stopped training smart. I ran but I didn't run quality. It wasn't until after my last Boston Marathon, when I didn...

It has been a long week. I am coming up on my 9th marathon and tapering is still the hardest part of training for me. It is not the 20 mile runs, not the two-a-days,  nor the tempo runs in humidity. Its the week of  tapering. The week where you have to relax because you have done the work and you need to let your body prepare for what you are about to do to it (run 26.2 miles).  This week is filled with anxiety for me. Have I done enough? Am I resting too much? Maybe I should squeeze in a hard workout so I don't lose my fitness.   Tapering is simply backing off the volume and intensity of training and resting your body so you can benefit from the hard work. It is necessary if you want to run your best on race day. You are not going to run your best when you are exhausted. You have to let your body respond to the work.  I know this but I am anxious. I am ready to go fast. I am ready to go try to tackle that 3:15 that I have been gunning f...