The Not so Exciting 2015

Mile 10 at The London Marathon

So it's been awhile since I last posted.  London has come and gone and so has post marathon indulgence, recovery and a mental reset.  Basically I screwed up London.  I felt good, really good.  I kept trying to slow down, but every mile in the first 10k was too fast.  I had 2 sub 6:00 miles at 3 & 4 and went through the 10k in 37:29, more than a minute faster than I wanted.  Despite going through the half close to where I wanted to be (1:20:30), the first 1/4 had done some damage.  I had waves of feeling good and not so good between 13-18, but then I knew it was done.  I stopped racing at mile 20 and finished at an easier pace.  I ran 2:48, not what I wanted.  I had many mixed emotions after this race, no longer caring about the trials, or the marathon in general, to feeling good and knowing had I listened to my race plan I could have ran sub 2:43.  I needed to reset both mentally and physically, I needed to be hungry to train and race again.  It took me 5 weeks to really want to be running again and to start back up.

I can tell you trying to race back in shape isn't the best feeling in the world and can be a huge knock to your confidence.  I ran a few races (3.5 miler and two 5k's) since the marathon which were suppose to be just for "fun", but I'm hard on myself and although they were fun, I always want to be racing faster.  But it is and will be O.K.  It will come, this isn't my peak time right now, I'm at the bottom so I suppose these races could have gone a lot worse.  Winning the Corporate  Challenge (even though I wasn't too happy with my time) was a pretty cool experience and fun.  My next training cycle doesn't start until June 22nd and I'll do everything as usual that I'm scheduled to do to the best of my ability during that time.  

My first real race back into training will be Blessing of the Fleet 10 mile at the end of July.  I'll target Hartford Marathon this fall and go after the sub 2:43.  In the meantime though I've had fun with my teammates and have enjoyed downtime. It's not often I don't feel like running and after the marathon that seemed to be a frequent occurrence, which meant I needed that downtime.  So 2015 has been a funky year for me so far, but at least half the year remains and I'll do everything I can to make it go up from here!