racing

Marathon Lists

6 Mental States You Will Encounter While Training

1 : Clarity

Everything is perfect. Your goals are all out on paper. Your training plan leaves you months of lead time. You have you eyes on the prize, as it goes. You are clear and focused. 

Resolution Run (2020)

Each year for at least a decade I’ve been negating my ability to sleep in on the first day of the year in exchange for the glory of running a simple five klick race. The annual Resolution Run is a weather gamble, bringing out a thousand ambitious runners in sub-zero temperatures — fewer and fewer with each successive degree below freezing.

This year was no different.

Leave the house at 10am to get myself a reasonable parking space at the local YMCA.

Linger in the lobby trying to corner familiar faces, maybe snap some New Years selfies and group shots.

Okanagan Half (2019)

I ran my last half marathon of the year in October and a summer of training followed by an autumn of faster training netted me a pretty decent time.

About mid-month we packed up the new car and drove for twelve hours westward on Friday morning. It was planned. I had registered for the Okanagan Half Marathon in Kelowna, British Columbia, a beautiful little mountain valley city on the edge of a lake and tucked inside a microclimate that made it feel more like September than the nearly-winter chill back home.

Rock'n Roll Las Vegas (2018)

Las Vegas was, believe it or not, a family vacation.

We connected with Jenn and family and planned a multi-week trip that started with a race and ended with a theme park. Vegas was not the first choice for a race, tho. Originally, we had been talking about a California adventure that included Disneyland and one of those great RunDisney races I'd done previously. But the RunDisney folks seemed to have dropped all plans to continue running through Anaheim.

Plan B was to fly to Vegas, run the Rock'n Roll down the strip, then drive over to California.