Running Ruminations

When I went back through my blog archives to see what I wrote about at this time last year, I realized that I didn’t write about my previous year until freaking March! 2019 was a blur, but hey, we can’t complain about getting another year of life because many aren’t so lucky.

Like any Type A runner, I find it exciting to pore over my running stats and hypothesize what I could do in the future. Just like I wrote in 2018 about my 2017, though, the numbers don’t tell the whole story; they’re just a good place to start. With that, here’s what stands out to me over 2019’s 2,200 miles, 333 days of running, and just shy of 120,000 feet of gain: 

Winter and spring were both pretty tough. After running CIM in 2018 and taking some time off, I was eager to begin training in earnest again in January. Instead, I got sick in February and remained sick for a solid 4+ weeks (and stupidly tried to race at the 408k). I bowed out of pacing 3:35 at Modesto because I missed basically all of my long runs in February, and it just sucked. My schedule was super prohibitive in the spring, too, which also meant I couldn’t participate in any of the spring PA races. Being sick for a while and bagging races wasn’t what how I envisioned my 2019 beginning.

While they weren’t PRs, I pulled together solid races at the Silicon Valley half and at the Mountains to Beach marathon for the days that I had and the training I accomplished within the aforementioned prohibitive spring schedule. On a very pretty day in April, I had a wonderful time running the SV Half as a workout and finally remembered that having fun and working hard aren’t mutually exclusive in running or racing. Similarly, even though spring training got off to a rocky start for MTB, I entered the race feeling “calmly confident”, went for a PR, and came up short (but only lost 100 seconds between two shit stops mid-marathon, which is a useless fact that I’ll surely remember for the rest of my life). Since July ‘18 at SF, I had run 3:26 (and finished feeling absolutely wrecked), 3:24 at CIM (and finished feeling completely heartbroken), and then 3:25 at MTB. The lights finally came on up top at MTB, however, and I finished pretty freakin’ thrilled that I could have a “bad day” and still run a marathon! for! goodness’! sake! well, all things considered. 

Bowing out of TSFM’s full & CIM were hard decisions, sorta. At the beginning of 2019, I was giddy at the thought of racing (and/or pacing) four marathons. When it was all said and done, only one came to fruition, and shocker! — I was fine. Trying to squeeze earnest training for SF while I was in the midwest for six weeks this summer (and likely recovering from the tsunami that was my spring) was fairly impossible, and deciding to table CIM in favor of spectating at my eldest’s swim meet was a no-brainer. As my children get older and get more involved in whatever they want to get involved in, my availability to run, race, or train how I’d like diminishes, and that’s okay. Races aren’t going anywhere, the hills will always be there, and just because I can’t do something anymore (or doing said something no longer makes sense) doesn’t mean that the training is for naught.  

Staying open to a Plan B (or C, D, or Z, whatever) can still result in an amazing (and [still!] hard-as-hell!) experience. Again, if you would have told me in January 2019 that I’d finish the year by racing every single PA cross country race, I’d easily come up with a thousand reasons why that’d never happen, yet surprise! It did! The wonderful thing about running is that we can do it just about anywhere, and it can take on many different shapes and forms. Focusing my second half of ‘19 on running in such a way that would allow me to race XC well, week after week, meant that I traded long runs in favor of hills and trails, as well as marathon effort for “figure out how to grind up this hill as hard as you can, repeatedly.” Racing every PA race with Heather — and having my ass handed to me by all the incredibly fast women in the PA week after week — was humbling, fun, and 1000% worth it. I’m proud that I showed up and that my daughters saw me do the same week after week. Anything that’s worth it is never easy.

Related: showing up and doing the thing — despite whatever reason we tell ourselves we can’t or shouldn’t — applies to more than mileage. It wasn’t until the summer, when I was visiting my family, that I began to write in this space again in earnest. I had such a backlog of stuff I wanted to write about — book reports, race reports, and the garden-variety ruminations — that I quietly committed to writing and posting something, anything, every Wednesday for the rest of the year. I’ve never really kept a schedule in this space, and even when I felt like I had nothing to write about (or that whatever I wrote was garbage), I still made myself hit the publish button each week. When life gets chaotic, typically the first thing I toss is my writing practice. No more. Just show up — just hit publish — and it all adds up. Doing the work, even when we don’t want to, matters.

The passage and rapidity of time right now is dizzying. I have goals and ideas for 2020, but I think recent experience has taught me that the best way to proceed is with an open heart and mind to whatever transpires — be it repeating any of the 18 races I ran this year (1 8k, 1 marathon, 1 5k, 3 road half marathons, 1 trail half marathon, 1 5 miler, or the 11 cross country races) or something completely different. Your guess is as good as mine.

I’m profoundly grateful for this little hobby of mine and for the community it has brought to my life. 2020: here we go!