begin again

I think that I have to keep this blog going after all! After a few weeks of resting and some simple fun runs I think that the marathon wasn't the end.  Within the first few days after the marathon people were asking me the "what's next?" question.   At first my answer was who knows I am still enjoying this one, but then I started to ask myself what is next?  What do I see myself doing? Do I take a break or do I make a new plan?  What happened is I came to the conclusion that running and training is an important part of my life that I am not ready to scale back.  That doesn't mean that I am not cutting back because I do see how rest is part of even considering doing anything else.  I want my runs this month to be joyous and not dictated by mileage, so that is exactly what I have been doing.  I still get in 4 days but the deal that I made with myself is that I can run whatever mileage that I want and on whatever terrain I am feeling into (road, trail, path).  I also decided that I have to embrace that there is a part of me that is heavily goal-orientated and just go with it. 

I picked a local spirit duathlon as a new goal for July. I will train 4 weeks for it - starting next week and I just want to have a good time.  I have been looking at my bike longingly the last month or so, so this is my way of putting it to good use.  Of course that's not the whole story, but if you know me and you are reading this you probably already guessed that.  To step back for a second my original intention of running a spring marathon was to potentially run a fall one - nothing like dreaming big right?!  I sort of dropped that idea mid-way through training for the shear fact that my body, brain and soul just couldn't get on board with everything else I was going through.  After settling down a bit I have decided to train to run another marathon in November (with a half in August ).  That's the plan for now...to be honest now that I have a better idea of how to train and what to expect I am really looking forward to seeing how I can improve in six months.  I feel really strong and ready to tackle something else.  It is actually an attainable and realistic goal so why not right?!!