Bring Back...That Loving Feeling...

Oooh oooh oh...

Memorial Day weekend and my trip to Chicago may have brought back that loving feeling.  Maybe all this time I had just, in the wise words of Austin Powers, "lost my mojo," and needed a run on a familiar, favorite route to get my running mojo back.

Let me share my beautiful photography skills...

Thinking Ahead Thursday

So...I bombed the Brooklyn half [I think I took the "No Sleep til Brooklyn" stuff a little too seriously, among other things, outlined here].

I PRed this Weekend!! And lessons from the Brooklyn Half.

Gotcha!  Not that kind of PR.  Not the good one. I broke my personal record of not having walked in a half marathon before.  Not that there's anything wrong with walking.  In fact, check out this 2009 NY Times post about Tim Deegan, a 25-time marathon runner who improved upon his recent race times and qualified for Boston by walk-running...clearly, it has its merits.

Flashback Friday: My First Half, Plus a Little Carbo Chit Chat and more...

Part 1: Flashback Friday: My First Half


The first half marathon I ever ran was the More/Fitness Magazine Half Marathon, which is essentially two laps [plus a little] around Central Park the hard way.  Between the new PDR [personal distance record] that I would be facing and Central Park's not insubstantial hills, I knew I'd have to take a training plan seriously.  And I did.  I was following Fitness Magazine's half marathon training plan pretty diligently and determined that a reasonable goal for me would be to finish in 2:20:00.

I'm screwed.

If you had asked me what my goals were going to be for the Brooklyn half when I signed up for it I would have enthusiastically listed my a, b, and c goals for the day - a being if everything went great during training and the weather and my body were feeling great on race day and c probably would have involved just besting my current PR of 2:17:43.  "Why?" you ask.  Well, I began preparing with what I felt was enough time, I now have the confidence of having completed a marathon under my belt, and the course is supposed to be incredibly fast [mostly flat].

Pit Stops

This week was my company's annual training "retreat," and while we all love to complain about going to it, I guess I really shouldn't because it is, after all, where I met James four and a half years ago.  [If you're very observant / confused how I could have met him four and a half years ago at an annual event, gold star for you, and the answer is that they changed what time of year they hold the event]

Doggin' it to the Finish Line

We could use this time to go over the fact that I only completed about 9 out of the 30 goals I set for April and how that's not going to help me happily make it to the finish line or the Brooklyn Half, much less PR.

Tears of disappointment over my failure to meet April's Hold Me To It goals....

There's Always Some Excuse....

As much as I like to think it will change or be different next race, there's always some excuse for why training didn't go as well as I hoped and I'm sure there always will be!  Actually, maybe that's not true - for the marathon I managed to stick pretty steadfastly to my training plan (probably out of sheer terror over what was awaiting me), but for anything shorter there seems to be a recurring theme.