THE WINTER BLAHS

Thought I would give a quick update. I'm in "maintain" mode and perfectly comfortable with it. Since I'm not training for anything at the moment it is nice to be a little more relaxed about the whole running thing. I don't have to hit certain runs or else feel like a failure. Just as long as I'm getting a decent amount of mileage in I'm feeling pretty happy. During my "time off" I'm still hitting 25+ miles a week and over 100 a month, so honestly I'm not even throttling down that much.

I think this little "rest" period is good for me though. I need a "break" from running, both mentally and physically. And it's funny to use "rest" and "break" when I am still running as much as I do. However, I need to run in order to keep eating what I like to eat and not gain weight and feel decent, so I keep running. I am much more relaxed about it though, going by how I feel that certain day instead of hitting a certain run. Heck, even if I feel good but I get to running group and my peeps are doing 9:15/mile, I'm going to hang with them (except that one pub night when everyone did 5 miles and I refused to not do 7 since it was pub night so I ran alone).

Anywho, that's where I am at. At some point in January or February I'll kick up the training to get ready for my spring marathon. Until then, I'm just going to maintain. I am very aware I'm not getting any faster, in fact I'm probably slowly getting slower, but it's a trade off I'm going to accept to be able to hit my spring marathon training feeling like I got a proper break from the grind of training.

This weekend there is a sixteen mile Coach Jim run I'm hoping to attend. There is also a 100% chance of rain Saturday morning. If it's pouring down rain and 44 degrees I'm probably not going to go. Physically I can do it, but mentally... fuck that. If I'm marathon training then I go no matter what (I remember many wet Coach Jim runs training for Vancouver last year). In this case though... I'll try to find a period when it's dry and get some miles in, but I'm going to be miserable for three hours for no good reason.