Drawn to the fire
With the Newport Marathon just about two weeks behind me now, I think I can safely say that recovery has been going well. It’s been a lot of “listen to your body” miles, mostly at recovery or general aerobic paces, and it wasn’t until yesterday, almost two full weeks post-marathon, that I tried anything that resembled a speed workout for me. The ZOOMA Napa half marathon (which sold out! in its inaugural year! weeks ahead of race day!) is in a week, so I figured it was probably as good a time as any to see if my legs remembered what HMRP felt like… in no small part because I haven’t **truly** raced a half in well over a year.
Though Napa isn’t the culminating race or event for me in 2014, I am going into it with somewhat specific goals, ones that I’m still hashing out and will probably continue to hash out until the morning of the race. In my head, at least the “rough ideas” of the goals I have seem manageable, but we’ll see come race day. Things might go down in flames, but hey… part of the process. (and in the weird “the universe is on to me” department, this quote landed in my inbox from Runner’s World this week. I guess there is something to be said for just fuckin’ going with it…).
It’s exciting to do an inaugural race because by its very nature, there really isn’t anything you can go off of–like previous finishing times, for example–to give you an idea of what the race will be like. I’ve done very few races in their inaugural editions, so it’s pretty special to be able to do this one and because it’s one for which the other ZOOMA Napa ambassadors and I have been heavily promoting in social media land since January-ish.
Napa will be awesome.
Racing will be awesome.
Meeting and hanging with the other ZOOMA ladies will be awesome.
Hurling myself into the possible flames that my goals might get enveloped in–or not!–will be awesome.
And, with that, this lovely NFG song, which has become somewhat anthematic for me during the last part of my Newport training, and the song that, I kid you not, I had in my head for most of my race, and was actually singing it under my breath as I was racing–also about fire, metaphorically speaking–seems apropos.
Have you ever done an inaugural race? Do you give yourself “anthems” during training or racing? Tell me you love New Found Glory, too!