Fall!

And suddenly, it’s about that time of year where everything seems to feel like it’s in fast-forward!  It will be the holidays before we know it!

 

Cabo is now officially in less than 4 weeks!!  That is CRAZY to me!  The training is funny—I haven’t really had to “build” up to any of it so I’ve just been doing stuff but not like before, where the swims, bikes and runs would all progressively get longer week after week.  I’m just kinda there, and I guess there have been a lot of “speed” workouts and not as many “base building” and “endurance” workouts ;)

 

This means that really, there’s only a couple “big” weeks left, then “taper,” although I’m guessing it won’t really be too much of a taper since it’s only a 70.3… but still!  Knowing it’s almost about to wind down is so strange.  I’m not really sure how I feel about this race, I kind of go back and forth….

 

The different distance is so strange to me.  Sprints and Olympics, I go ALL OUT, ALL THE TIME.  Well, Olympics I will go at about 105% instead of 110% on the bike ;) but essentially I’m pretty maxed out the entire time.  Ironman was obviously WAY different, and the whole point was to stay as easy as possible (while still moving).  Obviously, the half IM will be different, too.  I think I need to think of it more as a shorter race—even 5-6 hours is a BIG difference, compared to 12+ hours.  Maybe not 100% on the bike, but I still need to be pushing it.  I know I can.  I know my biking is back up and I can do it—so I just need to go for it.

 

I think I’ll be able to take a bit more of a risk, too.  Even if it gets ugly, it’s only 13.1 miles, not 26.2…and we all know that a half marathon is a whole different beast than a full marathon!

 

So, there’s that.  Trying to wrap my head around it all, and YES, I absolutely respect the distance… but I also can be a little bit more sure of myself, too.  I don’t have to save as much.

 

Before all that, though, we have the Long Beach Half Marathon coming up!!

 

Katie, Mel and Eric will be doing the full marathon (Katie’s first!), and Allen, Mac and I will be doing the half (Allen’s first!).  Just 2 weeks before Cabo, and only being a half…we’ll see how it plays out ;) I will talk to Shawn and see how he wants me to approach it (race vs. training run) but let’s be honest.  I’m going to race it.

 

I still feel like I struggle on my long runs, though, and honestly a 13.1 feels like a really long run to me still, these days!  :-\ I don’t think I’ve really had a good, solid, feels-good long run since CDA.  And that is frustrating.  My 13.1 PR is something like a 7:18/mi average and I honestly can’t even fathom that right now—so that is rough.  I know I “need” to be faster but it’s just so darn difficult!  On the other hand, I haven’t been racing much this year, and I seem to have forgotten that I always (so far, for shorter than IM stuff) race much faster than I train.  So maybe I just need to see what happens.  But I was still running a little faster in training last year (and feeling MUCH better).  But, Cabo is more important.  Ahhh, so conflicted.  I just want to be fast at running again!

 

Ok, so I just looked back at all my strava run logs.  Now I’m depressed.  I definitely was faster last year, and I distinctly remember it feeling a whole lot easier.  HMPH!