And the mystery is… I registered for my second marathon yesterday! I know. You all thought that it was going to be something much more exciting than this, but it is exciting! Since Portland, I had decided that I wanted to find my next marathon asap. I wanted to find one over near the east as Brent’s brother and wonderful family live in Nashville. I also wanted to run one in the late spring. This would mean that I could have the summer off from training to indulge in other outdoor activities that we passed by due to the tight schedule marathon training has you on. Nashville had a marathon at the end of April. Perfect I thought, but I was not completely satisfied at first. I spent a few days searching for something more on the coast. I thought it would be fun to run one in a place I had never been and otherwise would not go without running a marathon. The thing is, on this trip we also wanted to make sure we would get some good quality time in with my brother-in-law and the family.
After looking around a bit, Nashville became more and more appealing. The price did not look half bad either and with the eagerness of my sister-in-law wanting me to run it there. I made my decision. I knew I had until the end of December before the prices went up, so I was taking my time to register. Then my co-worker informed me of a discount on 11-11-11. Perfect! I decided that it was the best time to register and now I could not say no. This also made Brent’s decision to register for the half marathon easier. The thing about the half marathon is that the price was only five dollars less than the marathon. A little ridiculous if you ask me. Since he would be getting the discount as well, he decided why not?
The two races start at the same time and stick together for about 11.5 miles. That means, Brent should be able to run with me! That is unless he wants to scoot along the course as fast as he can manage. We will see. Maybe we will end up in different starting gates? Who knows. I am just excited that he will be able to participate as well. He is excited to not run another full marathon. Plus, we will have family there to support us.
The other thing about this course is that it will be hiller than the Portland Marathon. Which is one of the flattest courses and probably a good first marathon to run because of that. I loved Portland and was glad that I ran that for my first marathon experience. The hills do not seem too drastic. In fact. I think I am going to welcome them. I like a change in elevation on my long runs. It helps keep things interesting and works a few different muscles. I would have welcomed a few more in Portland. The one hill we had to climb felt good. Look! The elevation just seems to barely peak at 600 feet. I think that if I spend sometime running any hills that I can here, the hills in Nashville will be loved.
If I were to do my six month training again, I would have started last week. I want some time off from the training mentally, so I am going to wait to put down a plan for a little while. I am going to start the plan with four months of training. However, I have a rough idea of what I should be running on my weekends up until that point. I am going stick as close to it as I can. I think this mental game of not having it written out will help me in that I am not “training” when I really kind of am. I think it is just a good break.
I was planning an 8-10 miler today depending on how I felt. I woke up and looked outside thrilled that the snow that was forecasted had not yet begun to fly. I meandered down the stairs to only see the wind was blowing more than I would appreciate. I decided to pull up a quick weather report to find that there were gust of wind up to 30 mph. No fun! Then I turned around to look out the window. Sure enough, there was the winter storm and the snow was flying. This is going to be the hard thing about training during the winter here in Montana. I am not too sure what I am going to do about this type of situation. The next several days are calling for wind and snow. This is why my longest run last winter dropped down to a 5 miler. I cannot let that happen this year. I guess we will see what happens. I might be a very unhappy runner for a little while.