January 4, 2015 - Ok, I'm not off to a bad start with one of my new year goals: this is my 2nd post within a week! I truly need the Spirit of God to help me work toward my goals. The key to achieving these goals is consistency. I will not be able to stay consistent without Him. In and of myself, I'm a procrastinator. However, if I surrender myself to Him and His ways, all things are possible. I truly hope to remain consistent in pursuit of my 2015 goals.
As you may (or may not) have read in a brief post back in September, I did not make it to the starting line of the Chicago Marathon. A pretty significant calf strain put me on the chopping block for the race. Although I had a peace deep inside me the entire time, I was still a little confused as to the why. In fact, I still do not know why. That's for Him to know, and for me not to worry about. When it became apparent that I would not be running, I told my friend at church (the one who God prompted to finance the entire Chicago trip---you can read the details about this in a previous post). I told him that I would be returning his money to him. He responded by saying, "No. Use it for another race." I didn't bother arguing with him this time, because I knew he meant what he said. At this point, I really had no idea what future race this could be.
After taking approximately 5 weeks off from running, I began to slowly work back into training. It was hard to think about training for another marathon. In preparation for Chicago, I put in close to the most amount of miles I had ever run in marathon training. For much of the summer, I averaged between 80-90 miles a week, with a shorter recovery week thrown in every now and then. Based on a 1:09:32 Parkersburg Half Marathon, and a 1:12:30 Canton Half Marathon (this was a marathon-paced workout), I felt I was in the best shape of my life heading into a marathon. I was ready for a BIG PR in Chicago. After putting in all of this work, and not even make it to the starting line....this affected me mentally more than I thought it would.
Although I was excited to begin running again after a long layoff, the thought of training for another marathon brought about a little sense of dread. The thought of running 3-5 days a week, and maybe working back up to 30-40 miles a week (at whatever pace I felt like running) didn't sound too bad. Working back up to at least 70-80 miles a week with tempo runs, speed workouts, etc. didn't sound too good.
However, this mentality needed to change. Here I had this HUGE blessing of a fully-financed marathon trip, and I wasn't sure if I even wanted to train for another one. Well, my first week back running, I ran 3 days for a whopping 10 total miles. The weeks that followed included weeks of: 27, 35, 38, 45, and 47 miles, respectfully. During this time I tried to stay prayerful about what marathon to train for, and for an increased desire and motivation to train for one.
One evening as I was looking at marathonguide.com, I was scoping out a potential race that could potentially produce a PR, while being a good trip for my wife and me. The race that seemed to leap off the computer screen was the Phoenix Marathon on February 28th. It is a point to point race that drops around 800 feet in elevation from start to finish. There are a few uphills, but it is mostly downhill and flat (according to the reviews and elevation chart). Also, my wife has never been to Arizona, while I haven't been there in about 25 or 26 years. We are planning a short trip to the Grand Canyon the day after the race. So, prayer #1 was answered....I had another marathon to train for. However, I was still struggling with prayer #2.
STAY TUNED FOR THE NEXT POST......NEW RACE, NEW PLACE PART 3.
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