that one time I had a blog

In case the crickets on my running blog haven't clued you in, there hasn't been a whole lot of running happening in my world.

There HAS been a whole lot of: cooking (I can cook, who the hell knew?!), eating Papa John's, watching Toddlers & Tiaras and feeling sort of generally restless and unsatisfied but not really being able to do anything about it.

I get sort of stuck in these ruts sometimes...I think part of this was standard post-marathon-ing, where you work toward a goal forever and then it's over and that's a letdown, but I think more of it was just me and my general inability to deal with things sometimes. This probably sounds confusing and I don't think I can explain it any better than that; it's just a pattern of inactivity and unproductive-ness that I tend to fall into and a tendency I don't like about myself, really.

Anyway, so my running coach was all, "You can totally do a March or April marathon! Here are my long and detailed thoughts about the races you are considering, which I took time out of my busy life to send you because I'm amazing! Let me know what you think!" I read the email, went running twice and then retired to the couch for more Papa John's and DVR'd programming. YOU KNOW. PRIORITIES.

It's too late now to register for any of the races I was considering. I don't have enough time and because I've only run a tiny bit since Chicago, I'm starting from square one again. But I think about the marathon pretty much daily. I want to do another one. It's probably time to just bite the bullet and do it.

In order to make this work, here are some things I am going to have to accept:

1. I'm going to have to learn to be a morning runner. The weather here is perfect for training - the coldest it's gotten so far is 40s, which to this Wisconsin girl is still pretty balmy - but it still gets dark super-early so I can't run after work unless I do it on a treadmill. And no. No thank you.

2. I am going to have to up my mental toughness and run when I don't feel like running. I struggled with this a lot in my last training cycle; I was mentally weak and while it didn't ultimately affect my race performance much, it stressed me out brutally during my training. I don't want to do that again. I want to do this correctly.

3. I am going to need to cross-train. I am an injury-prone runner (well, let's be honest, I am an injury-prone human, and I can't run daily. Depending on the day, it's difficult for my body sometimes to run two days in a row. I think that's okay - it worked fine for me in Chicago - but cross-training on the off days will obviously help my fitness immeasurably. I think it'll also help prevent training burnout.

So I'm perusing marathons again. (Okay. I never really stopped.) I don't want to do another fall marathon because I have no interest in trying to train through a North Carolina summer, which as far as I can tell starts in May. Also while I would LOVE to do a destination marathon, it's just not feasible for me financially right now (Forever Alone, no one to split a hotel room with!), so it's a matter of finding something in a city where I have peeps. Yes. I just said peeps.

I'll step up my game - both running and blogging - soon, hopefully. But for the meantime, enjoy this mostly uninteresting update of my thought process. :)