Jazzed
In my haste to post literally anything last week Wednesday, I managed to misread the calendar in relation to how far out the 50k was. I have more than a month (but barely), fortunately. I confused my early November commitments.
I feel well overall, given what I ran last week (over 60 miles / 7k elevation / nearly 11 hours of running, including a 5 hour/24 mile long run on trails last Saturday), though I have felt especially sleepy the past couple days and tonight. It’s tough to discern whether it’s because of the accumulated fatigue of training and last week’s big numbers, or because the kids are back in school this week and my evenings are swamped with nighttime meeting obligations, or our busy weekend (after a pretty chill week, due to the fall break), or some combination of all of it.
All I know is that I started to draft this earlier today, before 1pm, and now at 10, after nearly four hours of nighttime meetings, I’m barely sitting upright, much less keeping my eyes open. I thought that maybe I’d begin to break down my 50k training and compare how this go-round compares to the last time I did this way back in 2014, but alas, I’m a couple weeks ahead of myself.
For posterity’s stake though (lol), I want to say that helping out all morning at SJ RNR with Wolfpack on Sunday was an excellent way to end last week’s training and just left me vibin’ with all types of feel-good energies that I get when I spectate or volunteer at races. It’s so fun to see so many people and know that they’re working hard out there — even if they’re just running it “for fun” — and hot damn, even with the hot hot temps, so many people ran like freaking rockstars! A and I were out at SAP (mile 6 on the out/less than 1k to the finish on the back) as course monitors and cowbelled for hours for something like 7,000 runners. It was a blast.
The fall is always such an amazing time of year for marathon runners, and this year it’s turned up a thousand percent. Whether it was at Sunday’s SJ RNR half marathon race, last weekend’s London Marathon, a few weeks’ ago’s Berlin Marathon, Monday’s Boston Marathon, or next weekend’s Chicago (or next month’s NYC Marathon) — or hell, even CIM here in December — I am so stoked for so many friends who have put in the work/are putting in the work still, over the past year+, to cash in on some badass goals at these upcoming races.
It is invigorating and inspiring, and it’s hard not to feel jazzed right now. It is the ultimate palate cleanser to the past 18 months.