I feel like this post is long overdue but my life has been sucked into the vortex of school holidays. Right now I am writing this in the kitchen, partially shielded by the pantry because there is less likelihood of one of the small people noticing me and asking me for something. We’ve had a great school holiday break but no matter how great it is the last week is always like dragging yourself to the finish line. AND WE ARE NEARLY THERE.
One of the great realisations I had last year was that because I’ve been running and training for as long as I have, I know that if I’m not looking for a PB and I’m just running I don’t have to worry so much about specific training and I can just do the things that I enjoy doing and run the events that I want to run. There are some fairly heavy caveats on that of course – it’s not like if I want to run a marathon I can skip long runs – but I can take a lot more of a relaxed approach to training. Once you know what your body is capable of – that’s a huge part of the battle. So I know if I am doing a few couple hour runs here or there I can go and run a marathon. Might not be fast – but very doable.
Whereas last year, I felt like I ended up sacrificing too much of my strength work for marathon training and ended up being overtrained. So this year, I’m taking a bit more of a balanced approach and I’m not really planning on racing any events – just getting out there and having fun. Like I’ve said before you have to choose your hard. Going from a partnership to a solo operation was so much harder than I ever imagined it could be. It was isolating and where before I had someone to bounce ideas off, now I mostly internalise all of my stress. I’m working on that. As joyful and as rewarding as it is for me, all of the business type stuff that I don’t have natural talent for is hard. The coaching part comes pretty easily to me – marketing not so much. I’m also starting my Bachelor of Sport and Exercise Science this year which might be a bit of a shock to the system, since I haven’t been to university in about ten years. So I really needed my training this year to be the easy, fun part of my week. With that in mind I’ve got someone to put together my programming based on not racing and running four times a week. The cool thing about that is, it does mean I can go to more events. Last year I had to be pretty strict about what I was doing because I really wanted to peak for a certain event which meant not racing a whole lot inbetween.
Maidenwell Marathon – 26th/27th March – Maidenwell, QLD
Warwick Pentathlon – 21st/22nd May – Warwick, QLD
Macleay River Marathon – 12th June – South West Rocks, NSW
Gold Coast Marathon – 3rd July – Gold Coast, QLD
Jetty to Jetty – 17th July – Brisbane, QLD
Brisbane Marathon Festival – 7th August – Brisbane, QLD
Sydney Running Festival – 18th September – Sydney, NSW
Melbourne Marathon Festival – 16th October – Melbourne, VIC
That should keep me pretty busy, right?
You might find yourself running this year too! If you are interested in Learn to Run you have a few more days to sign up, or you can join Run Club anytime!
This is an awesome list of events Zoey!
Year of just running for me! Really nice change from racing for PBs!
Great list Zoey. What will you be running at Maidenwell and Warwick?
I’ll be running the Sunday marathon at Maidenwell and all five(!) events at Warwick. My long runs are getting significantly longer 🙂