Races

I have to say that helping out at NYC really got me motivated to run and race again. I have been devouring six months of running mags that I hadn't read since the injury (I'm not sure, but I think both my subscriptions may have run out...), and I've also been keeping up a good 30-35 mile per week running base. Since the Staten Island Half, I've been doing 13+ miles on my weekly long runs. This has generally been a pretty good distance for a long run, but after many of them, at least for the next day or so, my hip has been feeling pretty tight. So I've been a little gun-shy about increasing mileage and more than a little worried about targeting another marathon. However, yesterday I squeezed 14.4 miles into my long run, and not only has it been my longest run since the spring, but my hip feels fine today. While I don't expect to never feel any tightness ever again, it gives me a renewed sense of confidence that things are getting better.

And with that, I've taken the plunge and began thinking about new goals for my running. I've been wanting to do a 5-miler for a long time, and the only one coming up that I could find is a Turkey Trot in Westfield on Saturday the 25th. This would be fine - Westfield's a really nice town and all - but it's still a bit of an inconvenient train ride just to run for a half hour, so I've been reluctant to register. Lucky for me, though, there's construction in Central Park on the Terrace Drive, so yesterday when I logged on to NYRR's site, I found out that the Holiday 4-miler has been changed to a Holiday 5-miler on Dec. 2nd. I think this is one of the first times I've been happy about landscape construction outside of keeping me employed. So I signed up for that race and the following 15k on the 16th. There's a 10k on the 9th, which is also a points race, but I don't have any interest in doing a 10k at the moment, and I think running three races three weekends in a row a when I'm just returning to competition is a bit daft.

Heading into the winter is always a challenge for me, as I often find myself too wimpy to go run outside in January when it's 10 degrees out. So I've decided to do my next marathon at the end of March, hoping that it keeps me motivated to keep up my training through the cold weather. I'm giving myself another week or so until the end of November to decide, but right now it's come down to two choices. First, there's the Ocean Drive Marathon in Cape May. This would be relatively close to home - I could rent a car and just get a hotel for a night. Plus I've only driven through Cape may once after taking the ferry from Delaware, and it would be a nice, scenic race. My other, more preferred choice is the inaugural ING Georgia Marathon in Atlanta. My cousin lives in Atlanta, and I could make this more of a vacation as well. I'm used to hot, humid marathons anyway (I'm three for three in running 26.2 miles in above-68 degree weather, so why stop now?). The elevation chart looks challenging, too, so I might end up doing this one as a long training run and do the NJ Marathon as a race a month later. We shall see.

I'd actually entertained the idea of doing the Bataan Memorial Death March Marathon at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. Then I came to my senses. It's just not the first marathon that someone should do coming off of an injury, I would think. It sounds like a great experience, though, so I'll look at it again for next year.

At any rate, it's good to be looking ahead at upcoming races again.