Birthday Running Thoughts 2016

It's been a pretty great while since I wrote. And by "great," I mean literally. Great things have happened, but this past Sunday I turned the big 4-2 and that's what I want to write about now. My birthday is a time I like to assess my year and how I hope to change and grow in the future. For the past 5 years, these thoughts have included what I am doing with running, naturally. This is going to be an amazing year! At the age of 42, hundreds of hours and thousands of miles will culminate in participating in the Boston Marathon for the first time! My current fantasies include a new PR at this event and the excitement of a kid at Christmas over the wonderment of 2017 jacket colors. Who else is going bonkers with guesses?

For my birthday, Mallory gave me the Compete Training Journal by Lauren Fleshman and local Providence runner Roisin McGettigan-Dumas. I spent part of my birthday using this journal to assess where I am now and what I can work toward to help me improve further. These were my conclusions for areas to build upon and make me a better runner: 1. Strength train as assigned everyday. 2. Spend more time on social runs. Run with Rhode Runners and friends when I can in order to bring more joy and connection to my training as well as maybe push myself a little harder by doing long runs with others who may be faster than I am. 3. Use my new training journal religiously to keep me on task and accountable.

Journaling my goals

I've done well with goals and training this year. I qualified for Boston in both of my marathons (Sugarloaf for 2017 qualification and Detroit to get me in hopefully for 2018) and completed more than 2016 miles in training. I set a lot of goals and completed almost all of them, including new PRs in every distance. I placed in AG or overall in the majority of the events I ran. However, I also know I could have done even better with a couple little tweaks.

Boston Marathon Training begins on January 9, so for now it's just about building mileage back up after taking some serious recovery time, having a regular cross-training/strength building practice and  riding the wave of all the exciting things happening this month: Detroit marathon age group award and shirt coming in the mail, finding out about Boston colors and getting my bling for the one virtual event I did this year, Resolution RunMo (2016 miles). This is going to be a great birthday month!