Tuesday, October 2, 2012

When You Reach The End...Begin Again

Normally the Fox Cities Half Marathon marks the end of my racing season.  I remove the chip from my shoe, hang up the bling, and retreat to the couch until sometime in March.  Not this year.  I've decided to try to do all the races in the Great Lakes Running Series this winter.  The series consists of six races between November and March, and runners have the option of racing 5k or 10k.  The March race, The Luck of the Irish, also offers a 15k option, which I hope to do.  As of right now my plan is to do the 5k for race #1-3 and #5, the 10k for #4, and the 15k for #6.  This should also put me in a really good place to run a spring half marathon if I want to.

I've also decided to do something for the second November race that I haven't done since my first 5k: follow a training plan!  I already know I'm more than capable of running 3.1 miles in a fairly reasonable amount of time, so I'm curious to see if actually training specifically for this distance can help me set a new PR.

Of course a training plan is just that - a plan. To me it shows what workouts I would accomplish in an ideal situation.  Life is not ideal.  There are days that you just can't get your workout in and there are days where you flat out don't want to.  When I'm truly committed to following a plan I am to complete 80% of the workouts - especially the long runs.  No sooner had I finalized my training plan, complete with working around a camping trip at the end of October, than something came up and required additional alterations.  I'm definitely not complaining about the source of the latest alterations:

(source)
 An opportunity has arisen for me to join Mr. R&R at the end of a business trip for three days in Paris!  The timing is definitely not good being that October is the craziest month for me at work and you pretty much need to be on a mortuary slab to be out of the office in the last days of the month, but I threw myself at the mercy of my bosses, and am being allowed to take exactly 2 1/2 days off since this is a once in a lifetime opportunity! (Now I just have to hope that my expedited passport renewal gets here in time.)

I plan to share the details of my training plan in another post, but in the mean time, does anyone have any must-see/must-do items for a whirlwind trip to the City of Lights?