2012: The official goals post

As this is auto-posting, I'm getting back into a familiar routine.

While most of the world is sleeping in on Saturday morning, once again I'm up early. Before dawn early. I'm putting on my cold weather gear, packing a bag of warm clothes to change into after, and warming up the Fit.

I'm driving 40 minutes to join the long procession of cars turning into Thomas Worthington High School for the Marathoner in Training program (MIT). Jeff's going to gather all 400 of us in the gym to kick the winter season off. He'll call out "10:30s!!!" then we hit the Olentangy Trail, sun, rain, sleet or snow. We'll yearn for the heat of summer, just as we yearned for the cold of winter in August.

I'm going to stop with the "I must be crazy for doing this" posts. It's a foregone conclusion. We're all crazy in our own little ways. I just choose to blog about it.

All 400 of us share one same personality trait: We're all goal oriented, some to the point of obsession. The magic number is called a PR, a personal record, and each one of us is there because we're determined to beat it.

The PR could be a goal distance, for many first timers it's simply to run as far as you can, to the marathon or half marathon point. That was my ambition my first season of MIT, training for Cleveland. 

But once you complete that distance, you now have a time to beat. Some simply want to beat their time, others set a new goal time. I ran a 4:32 in Cleveland, and sought to run Columbus in 4:20. That was the number that was burned into my head in my second season of MIT. I smashed through that goal, running Columbus in 4:13.

Passing the halfway point

This week in training.

It's kind of fun to look back at my posts from the same point of training in the spring. Today was the first 14-miler. Last session I replaced it with the CRRC Winter Run in Granville. That was a really good run for me. Today could not have been more different.

The weather was worse than last week. We met at 6:30 and the temperature was tolerable, but the humidity was worse than last week. I was completely soaked by the halfway point.

It took me awhile to get into the groove, miles 1-2 were really difficult but miles 3-10 were pleasant. I wore my compression socks so my shins didn't hurt. My heart rate was a bit higher than last week throughout.

After we turned around to come back I really started struggling. I got some awful side stitches the last two miles. I slowed it down on Mile 13 but picked it back up on Mile 14 because I really just wanted to be done.

I'm going to cross train Mondays and Fridays until I make it through this heat (and I'll be at your spin class Thursday Jamie, no worries!) This Monday was my first time on the bike and it was a lot of fun. I covered 15. Next week I'm going to shoot for 20.

Next week's long run is a fallback, so 10 miles. Monday I'll ride 20, Tuesday I have 6, Wednesday is 4 -- I'll shoot for hills, Thursday and Friday are both 3 but I may try to swim or ride Friday.

I want a running skirt...

Totally unrelated, I'm back on my Rilo Kiley kick. Here's my song of the day:

Photos from the Granville winter run

The Columbus Roadrunners Club took a bunch of photos at the Winter run Feb. 13. Here's a YouTube slideshow of all of them:

Here's what I look like finishing 15 miles (special thanks to CRRC for emailing these to me!):

And here's the starting line: