Well, I think my final race schedule is in for the year. I think. Right now I only have two races left – the TriRock of Clearwater on Nov 10th and then the Space Coast Marathon on Dec 1st. I’ve gone back and forth on a couple races and I just am not sure if I want to do a half marathon on Oct 26. I think I could do it fine and that would fit fairly well into my plan for a light weekend that weekend but I’m still torn on it. The only other race that was a possibility was a 4 mile race on Thanksgiving morning. I love doing that race as I’ve done it most of the past 6 years but even with it being short, I don’t want to go out and ‘race’ anything that morning. I won’t be able to help myself if I go so I’m going to stay home for the 2nd straight year. Last year I was also prepping for a marathon and it didn’t fit into my training/rest schedule.
I was also behind on updating my past results so I made sure to get those in as well. At this point I’ve completed as many races as I have in my previous best year of running which was 2011. I’ve done 8 races with at least two more to go. There is a big difference looking at these two years though. 2011 I basically was running every race distance that was slightly too far for me. I ran an 8k when I should have done 5k. I was running 10ks when I was still better trained for 5ks. I ran 15k when I should have done 10k. And I did a half marathon after not doing very good for a couple months of training. I did have a PR on a 5k that year that still stands (I haven’t run a 5k since but its a good time for me anyway)
This year, however, I’ve PRed every single race I’ve run. Two of those races were the first time at that particular distance and my only other marathon back in 2000 wasn’t trained for the same as I’ve done lately but still, I’ve never felt like I’ve run a race this year that was beyond my capabilities like I have in previous years. It makes me feel good about what I’ve been doing. That really culminated in my recent Disney race which I’ll be doing a race report for as soon as I get a couple photos from it. Going back to last December then I’ve PRed now 9 straight races. That’s pretty amazing now matter how I try and look at it. I’ve lowered my PR in the marathon, the half marathon twice, twice in the olympic distance triathlon, twice in the sprint triathlon (both were equal distance), once in the 10k distance, and set a PR for 10 miles (new distance).
That does leave me a bit of a trick for the remainder of the year. My olympic distance PR is decent but I think I can do better now. I feel like, all else equal, I could cut a few minutes off the swim and bike each. The run I would just want to do about the same. But that’s tough! My transition times are mostly ok so that’s not going to get me any time either. But the real challenge is with my marathon coming up, I really think I need to do my last long run of 20 miles on Nov 9th which is the day before TriRock. Even if I go easy for 20 miles I don’t know if I’ll have enough gas to do my best race on Sunday. I’ll see how I feel after my first 20 miler I have coming up the day after but hopefully I can at least enjoy TriRock. I think I can. My recovery has been pretty good overall from training this year.
So I would have liked to get to 10 straight PRs but the streak has to end some time. If I do the half marathon on Oct 26th then I could possibly PR there. Instead of worrying about my streak though, the one thing I really want to do this year still is try and PR a 5k. I may save that for after the marathon though. I really don’t like doing 5ks anymore since they’re so short but I feel like its a good, occasional race to do for time.