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Bring it

Bring it

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In my previous post, the one that apparently took me the entire summer to write, I quickly stated that I wasn’t sure what my NYC plans were–what magic I wanted to run for my marathon #18, and on my birthday, no less–but I think I finally got the motivation I needed to a) be real with myself, b) admit aloud what I’ve been marinating over for several months and c) just say f-it and go balls to the walls.

My plan? Have nearly as good a race in NYC as I did in April, and go for a 3:35-3:40.

My training has been strong, my speedwork solid, my races good, and right now anyway, the weather looks favorable.  It appears that I’ll be missing Frankenstorm, though I might get rained on a lil on marathon Sunday.

As you might recall, April’s Christie Clinic Marathon brought me a 3:34, a new PR (by about three minutes, one that apparently took four years and a pregnancy to shatter), as well as my fifth BQ.  Urbana-Champaign was a relatively flat course, with just some periodic rollers, so it was leaps and bounds different from what I’ll be experiencing in NYC… or so I’ve been told.

My thinking for shooting for a 3:35-3:40 in NYC is that lowballing myself a lil will prepare me to really go after that which I’m seeking most in 2013… and this is what I’ve grappled with admitting for a while.

I’m gonna break 3:30 in 2013. 

Perhaps in Houston in January.

Or maybe at Eugene in April.

Possibly at an as-yet-to-be-decided fall marthon.

But it’s gonna happen.

Any reasonable predictors (technological or personnel, haha) say that I’m capable of it.

I’m ready to see it through, and NYC–a hard course, with a ton of people, with conditions that will probably be more stressful to me than any other course I’ve run in a while–will be a good stepping-stone to it.

What initially get me fired up about this was Matt’s post over at NoMeatAthlete, basically about how if we don’t balls-up (excuse the crude and vulgar language; it’s mine, not his) and really go after what we’re shooting for– really, in a word, to make ourselves vulnerable by telling ourselves AND OTHERS what we want to achieve– we’re shortchanging ourselves and in a way, setting ourselves up for failure.

For whatever reasons that I don’t entirely know or understand right now, Matt’s post really resonated with me.

Perhaps because I wrote about something similar, back in 2010, just a few weeks shy of my third Chicago marathon–the one I ran 10-12 weeks pregnant–when I was still hedging a bit about finally trying to go for 3:35.

In fact, after reading Matt’s post, I arrived home from teaching and put it all out there for my final speedwork session prior to NYC: 10×800 (with an average split of about a 3:23, if memory serves).

And later that night, when I decided to admit to C what I was thinking, he gave me hell because he said it was like I was delivering a sermon or a motivational speech because of how fired up (yet intentional) I was with my delivery.

I’ll post a pre- and post-race vlog on my YT channel, so check it out in the days immediately preceding and after the marathon because chances are, it’ll take me a while to write a decent recap.

Good things are yet to come.  Better things, I should say.

Such a backlog, again

Such a backlog, again

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Story of my life.

Last time we chatted, I had just had a not-great (“shitty”, haha) experience at the inaugural Fleet Feet women’s half marathon.  That was more or less the beginning of my training for the ING New York City Marathon…

and here we are, just about 2.5 weeks from race day.

Holy shit.

So, what’s happened since I last wrote in June?  In other words, what’s my excuse this time for not blogging for several months?

In a word: moving.  Buying our first place.  Dealing with nonsense real estate stuff that sucked my soul away for a while, and then moving, and then of course, getting settled into the new place.  The good news is that our new place rocks, and I was still able to train a lot this summer by way of the usual marathon training and adding some CrossFit into the mix.  The bad news, as you can see, is that I didn’t chronicle my exploits.

What’d you miss?

1. Undie Dash: Yep, I ran in my skivvies along the lakefront for charity.  Just a 5k on a Thursday night.  I would have loved to be a tourist that day and see all these scantily-clad runners along the lakefront.  My dress was pretty conservative.

2. WTTW 5k – Ever since I had found out about this race, I knew I had to do it because I wanted A to get some quality time with the gang from Sesame Street 🙂  plus, though I rarely watch TV, I do enjoy PBS, so I wanted to support public television and educational programming.  I had a solid 16-miler the day before the 5k, so I was pretty tired going into it, but I was satisfied with what transpired: first woman overall, first woman in my age group, and I think fifth finisher overall.  Like the Undie Dash, this was unofficially timed, but I posted around a 21:15, so just slightly off my 5k PR I had set in May.  Though the race was toasty and humid, it was a blast, and having A come afterwards to meet some of her buddies made it all worthwhile 🙂

C is for Cookie!
What can I say? A likes redheads 🙂

3. Lake Zurich half – This was a comped entry from the March Madness half earlier this year.  Lake Zurich is a good hour and change away from where I live in Chicago, so that necessitated a very early morning, renting a car, and the like.  I figured it would *probably* be worth the drive since the course was allegedly hilly, and my, it didn’t let me down.  We were constantly ascending and descending.  Overall, I was very satisfied with how things went (1:35, 5th woman overall, 2nd in my age group) because the two weeks immediately before the race found me crazy sick, twice, so my training going into that race wasn’t as good.  I vlogged about the race immediately after I finished it; check it out on my YouTube channel here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rqgm7EpUArE&feature=plcp.

Overall, training has gone well this summer.  I only had a minor setback from getting sick twice in two weeks at the beginning of September, but for the most part, things have been progressing well.  I’ve signed up for the Houston Marathon in January, and the Eugene Marathon in April, so I’m very excited about the next six months.  In addition, I just returned from an extended weekend in Vegas for a friend’s bachelorette party, so getting to run for three days in the sunny desert was a welcome change from the slowly-falling temps of Chicago, too.  Sometimes a little (or a lot!) change in scenery can do wonders for motivation.

As I’ve been getting myself pumped up for the fall racing season, I’ve read Meb Keflezighi’s biography, Run to Overcome, and I’m currently making my way through a book all about the NYC marathon.  Perhaps in subsequent posts I will write book reviews of each.  I’ll add it to my to-do list, if nothing else 😉

I’m still at a loss as to how I want to run NYC – for a time, for fun, just see what happens – so I will keep you posted.  I know it’s a tough course, but I feel like I’m going into the race with a solid training, good speedwork, and some good race-day preparation from the racing I’ve done up until this year.  So much magic needs to happen on marathon day, so I will probably end up waiting until a week before the race to figure out what I want to go for… makes me nervous just thinking about it 🙂

More to come!  And hopefully in a less tardy fashion 🙂