After I published last week’s post, I realized that I may be coming off slightly disingenuously when I talked about my running goals or plans in 2020. To clarify: I’m registered for the Big Sur marathon (finally getting in via the lottery after several attempts!), the Mountains to Beach marathon about a month later, and my CIM deferral in December. I acknowledge that, yes, I have three marathons on my calendar — two in the first six months — and marathon training inherently lends itself to a bit of a structured training. I think I’m just in a mentally different place going into these marathons (#35-37, if I recall correctly… which sounds preposterous!) than before… or at least that’s what’s making sense today. I may jump into some local races or the PA series, but nothing else is on my calendar right now for next year. 

Anyway. Last week, I shuffled my long-right-now run (11 miles) around to midweek, during school hours, to accommodate my eldest’s final swim meet of the year up in the east bay. She did great (no DQs this time in anything) and managed to improve her 500 time by about .3 seconds, so she was pretty happy. Strangely, the meet began late on Saturday because the pool was too full — yes, apparently, that is a thing — so instead of waiting 3+ hours for a mechanic/engineer/pool person to come remedy the situation, all the coaches on the swim deck used contractor buckets to dump out the excess water (and did so in about an hour). It was bizarre … but efficient. 

When I originally learned that I’d be deferring CIM this year, my original back-up plan was to race the Woodside Ramble 50k this weekend. Eventually, the reality of my fall training availability made it abundantly clear that a 50k wouldn’t be in the cards for this weekend, though any of the shorter race distances (10k, half, 35k) could be feasible.

After waxing philosophic for too many weeks about it with too many people, I decided to go for it at the half this weekend. I’ve only done a trail half one other time (at a local Brazen race), I’ve only run at Huddart once (when I did the 50k back in ‘14, pregnant), and it’s pretty wet right now, so it should make for a fun and sloppy-as-hell morning with Meredith.

Absolutely nothing is on the line, nor are there any stated or secret goals, so provided I finish the race smiling, it’ll be worth my drive up the peninsula and the entry fee. 

Any end-of-year races or big/exciting/anticipatory runs for you?