A few people who know I ran the Shamrock Marathon last year have asked me if I'm doing the full again this year. I find myself replying, "No, I'm just doing the half." Just. Sure, it's called a half marathon, but let's face it...it's still 13.1 miles! I remind myself of a time when a 10k seemed like an insane distance to me and realize just how far I've come with running in just a few short years. So if you ever hear me refer to a half marathon as "just" anything, I give you permission to slap me.
Training for this year's Shamrock Half has been...well, going. Not going badly, not going great, but going. I've been mostly hitting my workouts and am feeling mostly healthy. As far as the elements go, I've had some cold temps and some wind to contend with, but that's certainly easier to run in than the snow and ice we had along with the cold and wind last year. Listen, I have friends in New England...you will not find me complaining about our winter this year!!! As tough as the wind can be to train in, it's the best way to prepare for a notoriously windy Shamrock race day.
I've taken a few of my speed workouts indoors when I just couldn't muster up the desire to do them outside, typically when it's cold and wet and windy. It's always a gamble though...I have to time it just right, hoping someone is getting off their treadmill a little early to give me more than the 30 minutes the rec center will let you occupy a treadmill for. And I don't know how many speed workouts on the treadmill it's going to take for me to convince myself I'm not taking the easy way out by running inside instead of outside. There was nothing easy about 1000 meter intervals at 9.2 mph yesterday*!!!
*And as a side note, there's nothing easy about the math involved in converting my goal pace to mph either. Frickin' algebra, dude.
With less than 6 weeks left til race day, I find myself ramping the intensity back up again after backing off a bit the past few weeks due to illness and travel. My number one training goal right now is to be smart, so I've tweaked my plan a bit to avoid doing too much too fast and ending up injured again. Of course the time off took it's toll on my mental state, allowing doubt to return in full force. I had all but given up on my A goal for this race. But then I had several great workouts in a row, pushing me back into the camp of maybe I can. And these workouts weren't great because I hit my times easily. I actually didn't hit them at all. What made them great was all the times I wanted to give up and slow down but pushed harder instead. I fought. This race is going to be a fight. I can either train myself to fight and be proud of whatever outcome I get, or I can train to say "I don't think I can so why bother even trying" and set myself up for failure before I even get to the starting line. I've experienced enough race day magic this past fall to believe the fighter will undoubtedly show up on March 22. Whatever the time on the clock reads after 13.1 miles, there will be no coulda-shoulda-woulda's with regards to my training. This fighter is all in.
