I'm a planner. I like lists, calendars, appointments and goals. I mean, I create strategies and schedules for a living, so it's only natural that part of this spills over into my off time. Even though I've accomplished roughly 3/4 of what
I set out to do in 2012, I'm already plotting 2013. The thing is, I don't like to race unless I'm completely prepared and trained up to perform my best. I'm not a race-every-weekend kind of athlete because my body just can't take it. Instead, I'm very deliberate and meticulous about my racing. It's not that I don't have fun; on the contrary, I have a lot more fun at a race knowing that I've done everything I can to prepare for the race.
So I printed out a calendar and started adding races and counting weeks. I wanted to make sure I had enough time in between weeks to rest and then train up to the next thing. Tentatively, here's what I have on tap:
March 30 -
Egg Shell Shuffle Half Marathon, Schaumburg
June 7-8 -
Ragnar Relay, Madison to Chicago
July 21 -
Ironman 70.3, Racine, Wis.
Sept. 22 -
Fox Valley Marathon (distance TBD, probably the half), St. Charles
Nov. 23 -
Route 66 Marathon, Tulsa, Okla.
Also, I'll be participating the
Fort2Base Race again next year, with the date pending there.
So tell me, is this too ambitious?
6 comments:
I think your schedule looks perfect. You can always add races to it if you feel like it. And a half IM... Badass. I hope to do one sometime :)
Ironman? Wow! I've always been interested in that Ragnar Relay. I don't race as much as some people either. Any race I run before a marathon is a "tune-up" race to help me determine my marathon pace.
After doing a lot of racing this year, I'm definitely starting to approach races like you do - with enough time to train properly for each one. I think your schedule will allow you to accomplish that, and I assume you would use the Fox Valley half as a training run for the Route 66 Marathon. I did that a couple times during my marathon training. Two months out from the race, you are probably still OK to somewhat "race" a half, but any closer, and and at least for me, I had that nagging voice in the back of my head telling me to just use it as a training run, and not push at my usual half marathon effort. And races at training pace are not as fun, unless you are pacing someone else to a PR or something.
yay, then I can see you again at the FVM!
Too ambitious? No way, it's better to be too ambitious than not enough :)
It doesn't seem too ambitious to me at all. Now that you have done two fulls it's a lot easier to keep up the endurance the second time around, and 70.3 training will help with that.
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