Dopey Challenge Week 6+7+8+9: Getting Unstuck

Week 6, 7, 8, and 9 of training has been mostly a blur because of the constant flurry of work. The miles are increasing but at a fairly slow pace — they’ve been alternating short and long run weekends: Week 6 was 7 miles, week 7 was 3 miles, week 8 was 9 miles, week 9 is supposed to be 3 miles, if I can motivate myself out the door tonight. (Running in the evenings tend to be a weakness for me, since I am mostly paranoid about getting an upset stomach because of having to time my eating.)

Now that I am coming into some time off before my next venture, I’m looking forward to incorporating yoga, some weight training, and maybe even swimming into my routine. It would be nice to decompress a bit before my next venture.

Training on my broken foot has been okay. It hasn’t been much of a nuisance lately, with exception of my morning run and a walk around town yesterday. It’s mostly been my stress level eating me up and tiring me out, so I’m really looking forward to my vacation. I have a ton of books I would love to catch up on. I also need to put my teaching materials together. I’m already putting together a to-do list for my time off so that I make the best use of my time off. Is that weird?

I’ve been toying around with the idea of hiring a running coach or joining a running group. A few months ago I cancelled my membership to Orangetheory, mostly to focus on my running. Since then I have done exactly that, but I’d like to do some more focused work on it. I think hiring a running coach would be a nice idea if I actually had some real tangible goals in mind though. My goals are always somewhat vague, mostly dealing with finishing a race but not really focusing on performance. I’m not sure if I’m ready to take my favorite past-time to that level yet.

I feel like I am so performance-driven elsewhere in my life that there should at least be one thing — that thing being running — that I don’t really beat myself up over to do particularly well in. One foot in front of the other, and try not to injure myself — how much more complicated should I make it, right? That was pretty much how I approached my other two marathons. I didn’t focus on performance too much. I think I was more concerned about performance in the 5K, 10K, and 13.1 range, even though I never did particularly spectacular. I think my best 5K time was 27:11 (8:40 min/mi), 10K was 1:00:15 (9:34 min/mi), and 13.1 was 2:26:49 (11:12 min/mi). I suppose it would be nice to work myself up to those times again.

I’ve also looked at a few running groups — it would be nice to meet some new folks, but making the time for it would also be challenging. The Rocky Mountain Road Runners group looks like it would be a good fit, but I also have a pretty full training calendar already through the end of the year. Maybe it’s something to look into for next year.

Speaking of next year, I’m already peeking at a few races for my calendar. The Colfax Half Marathon is swinging around after the spring semester, and since they’re still pre-registering, the race is really cheap. I’m also peeking at some races abroad for our potential honeymoon, although we’ve yet to settle on a location, date, and race yet. I can put that on my list of to-dos for these next few weeks.

Speaking of the next few weeks, here’s what I have in store…

Next weekend: Mystery vacation weekend for my husband
Following weekend: Weekend trip to Seattle
Following weekend: Breckenridge film festival and half marathon
Following weekend: A break from traveling
Following weekend: Back to Seattle for a wedding and for the 15M training race
10 weekends from there: the half + full marathon race weekend before Dopey

With all of the changes ensuing, this will be my mantra for the upcoming month:

practice

I’ve spent a bit of time planning for and dismantling some of the negativity around me. It’s time for me to focus more on myself: what I am looking to accomplish and what will really make me happy. I’ve spent the last few months fairly unhappy, and a few months is really a few months too long. Life is short — depending on how you look at it, I’m most likely more than 33% done with my life and I’m not about to spend it completely miserable. The bounty is high on my time and my happiness, and if I will be spending my precious life hours on something it’d better be worth my time.

stuck