Hasty Updates

With my last race of the year completed and no posts since September, I thought I'd write a short little update. I've been running here and there, consistently but certainly nothing crazy. I've been working a lot and am used to being a working man (read: I've become numb to the permanent fact that I'm awake at 6:10 every morning and working a minimum of 40 hours a week at a physically dangerous yet romantic but un-glamorous job that I typically enjoy and other times hate). I've been dabbling in the Bay life (read: city life, mellow Marin life, California girlfriend life [yes! I'm not longer dating running! (big deal friends)]. And I still use too many asides and parenthsis in my haphazard blogging.

After P2P 100 I indeed took the 10 days off that I promised. I proceeded to not really care about running but still did it here and there mainly for vanity and strava. I wrote an angsty blogpost that I didn't publish. I decided I needed to get motivated so I randomly signed up for Mt. Tam 30k, which was a hard effort and fun trail race which I happily won albeit against no competition. I also signed up for the CIM (California International Marathon) with intentions of running at least two workouts a week and throw down a respectible marathon time. I had not run a marathon since Richmond Marathon in November of 2011. 

2011, finishing a 3:05:xx

Of course I did not run at least two workouts a week in November. I've become proud with my manual-labor job, but it doesn't bode well for traditional training. About 75% of times when I decided that "today I'm going to do a workout" I ended up just jogging up a fireroad because that's much more enjoyable than running in circles around a track with a bunch of high school football players staring at you at the end of climbing and brush dragging day. 

I still made it work though, still running and still getting in two good marathon-effort long runs. Long story short, after coming up with a million excuses why I shouldn't run hard at CIM coupled with some pump-up texts from Jordy Chang, I told myself to suck it up and go crush it. Mom is usually right, and mom told me that I'm in better shape than I think I am. My initial plan was to run sub 3 hours, but friends were saying "uhhh, faster" so I thought I'd realistically run a 2:54. If you asked what I could've ran back in April, I would have said 2:45. But it's the end of the year and I'm not dating running. My cousin said I'd run a 2:52:38, so that sounded ok. I didn't fret about pace--it was NOT even, but when I saw anything above 6:42 I picked it up a tad. I ran by heart rate sort of. I wanted to average 160 the whole time, which is hard. I ended up running a 39:33 last 10k and finished in 2:52:07--a time I am definitely satisfied with but is not anything special. About ten mins worth of improvement if I so desire to go down the dreaded marathon path again. I ran a 1:27:11 first half and a 1:24:56 second half. I told myself I'd back half it all day long and I'm stoked that I did. It was kind of fun. I ran 12 or so miles from 13-25 with a couple of dudes who were really encouraging. I was happy to know that comradeship exists in road running occasionally, however fleeting. We vibed well together and they certainly helped my faster-than-expected time. 

I didn't get into the States lottery nor Hardrock, so I'm unsure what's up for 2015. I'll figure it out soon. I hope to run Miwok 100k, and maybe Lake Sonoma. Maybe San Diego 100. Ideally I want a June 100 and a Sept 100. I can see myself going back to P2P to put down a sub 20. For now, I need to sleep as I've been on the verge of sickness for the past couple weeks. December is guaranteed casual and January is guaranteed easy. I wanna go camping and do outdoorsy things without HAVING to run.

Much love folks. Second half year review is coming at some point, as is the numbers blog post.