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it’s trials time!!!!!!!!

it’s trials time!!!!!!!!

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It’s finally the week that so many of us runnerds have been waiting for: the Olympic Marathon trials is this weekend in Atlanta! At long last!!! 

I feel like the internet and podcast worlds have been awash in an impressive number of human interest stories related to the Trials, and there seriously isn’t enough time in the day to read and hear it all. It’s all so inspiring, and I just *adore* reading this type of stuff. I find it all so encouraging and can’t help but want everyone to make the team this year.

the future is female runners – shamelessly going to wear mine all weekend (pic is from last Sunday morning. J and I ran a hilly 14 miles before meeting up at a nearby grocery store so my eldest could sell her GS cookies) 🙂

To me, it doesn’t matter if we’re talking about a professional runner, whose job it is to run fast, or a local amateur who realized a big scary dream to earn those coveted three letters (OTQ): the shared thread here is that pretty awesome consequences can manifest if you put in the work.  

cheering for Steph and the ladies of NAZ elite (among many others)! tbt Wharf to Wharf ’18

I’m sending all my love and fast wishes to everyone racing down the dream this weekend, including my Wolfpack teammate Julie (who OTQed in Chicago this past year) and the many SF-based Impalas (another PA team) who will be toeing the line. I’ll be at a swim meet all weekend, so I am looking forward to the text message thread updates from my running BFFs in Chicago (hi, Stacey and John!) who will be watching. I may even resurrect my twitter (@erinamg) to follow along the fun as well. 

It’ll be awesome to find out who our top 3 men and women are; it’s anyone’s guess since the depth of the fields is so impressive. I’m also looking forward to the aftermath of the Trials as well, when we learn more about how hard the course actually was, how the organizers managed to get the 8972346 bottles out to the right racers during the event, how the racing strategies unfolded in the thick of things — all that type of stuff that has been so hyped in the lead-up to the Trials (and admittedly, stuff that precious few outside the running community probably care about). 

I still remember standing in my kitchen watching Amy and Shalane go stride-for-stride and seeing Des tearing it up, per yoosh, back in 2016; I’m so excited to see what happens this time around on a drastically different course (and hopefully in far superior weather). I wonder if it’ll be another moment in time that I remember where I was when I learned/read/watched when _____ did _____.  Ahhhhh can’t wait! 

LA 2016

It begs the question: why care about this stuff, especially if we’re not an OTQ hopeful? 

At the very least, it’s because in some small way, we runners get it. 

We know how most runs actually don’t feel all that great right out of the gate and that most of the time, it’s easier to do nothing than it is to do something. 

Those of us who have had to take time off from the sport, for whatever reason — pregnancy, childbirth, burnout, injury, overtraining, whatever — know how scary it can be to feel like you’re starting from scratch when you start up in earnest again. 

We know how frustrating it can be when it feels like your dream — whatever it is — seems impossible to realize.

working on Sunday

We know that The Grind is Real and know the fatigue that comes with trying to post solid training against the backdrop of other arguably more important commitments, like those we have to our families, partners, jobs, and academics, among many, many others. 

trying to make it work this week on preschool break

We know that it’s just miles, that it’s just running, yes, but it’s so much more than that as well. 

Light that course on fire, runners!!!!!!!!!!! Sending love and light xo


Fear need not apply

Fear need not apply

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Ugh, apparently I managed to screw things up on this little corner of the internet last week; it seems that I didn’t save my post (or something), which makes it look like I missed a week of writing for the first time since last summer. Dang! No worries: I just republished (or published for the first time, I guess?) last week’s post, so consider this one a bonus … or something. Anyway. Certainly no one cares about this as much as me.

Training has been going well for Big Sur and Mountains to Beach. I am having a lot of fun and am enjoying the grind. Right now, it doesn’t look like I’ll have a lot of racing opportunities before The Big One — kinda like how it unfolded last year, just due to weekend commitments between now and then — but that’s okay. I’ll figure it out. It’s not the end of the world.

Running can become fairly monotonous if we let it. It’s super easy to run the same routes, and the same paces, at the same times of day, on the same days of the week over and over again. Aside from being boring as hell and predictable (which, unfortunately, is something that we have to think about trying to avoid for fear of creepers and stalkers), that type of running is pretty self-limiting. 

That’s not to say that every run needs to be otherworldly awesome and life-changing or anything like that, but there’s something to be said for variety. Different routes, different training partners, different speeds: keeping things spicy can make what can otherwise be a tedious process much more enjoyable (on a completely different level). 

all smiles! so happy that the timing worked out and we all ran into each other Sunday morning. The ranger wouldn’t let us in the main entrance, so Plan B it was.

I think that’s why I like marathon training. At its heart, it’s just a lot of running, yes, but it’s also a lot of different types of running. It’s pretty easy to squeeze in a fair bit of variety each week; it’s rare that I repeat myself. 

I find all of this extremely liberating. When I don’t run the same thing twice, it’s pretty hard to compare one day’s results to another. It forces me to focus on the run I’m in right here, right now, and completely immerse myself and my energies in it. I used to get so in my own head about my workouts — or really, anything that wasn’t an easy run — and it definitely lessened the enjoyment aspect of training. I was constantly comparing to the shape I was in last year, last month, whatever or the shape I **wanted** to be in.  I was afraid that I wouldn’t measure up, and yeah… failure’s not flattering, as NFG reminds us.

These days, all I care about is the run I’m in the throes of doing. It removes the fear element of the equation and replaces it with curiosity and an openness to the experience, which IMHO is far, far more enjoyable and helps make the marathon training process more enriching.

say hello to my non-track track that I use when it’s a nice, sunny day and I don’t want to people-dodge 329782120 people in the park. No fear necessary.

There’s a lot of emotion involved in marathon training, to be sure, but fear needn’t be part of it.