And We're Back! Training Season 2015 is a GO.

So, it's been a while. A long while, this off season. I enjoyed running during this time, but I also enjoyed more mornings spent curled up in bed, and more evenings spent awake past 10 pm. But alas, we are back at the trail head. Back to training season. And I'm ready to be here.

Why the word "ready", and not something more enthusiastic? I've spent a lot of time thinking about this race season, and what I want it to be. After going all out last year, setting a new mileage PR, sub-4'ing my marathon, and setting a new PR in the half, I'm ready for a more mellow race year. So I slowly admitted to myself that this was OK (this was a hard thing for this Type A runner to admit!). I've set some still-aggressive goals, just fewer of them. I'm signed up for races, just not a full marathon. And this I'm delighted about. I'm ready to get into a training season that still pushes me, but also gives me some wiggle room to see what happens. To decide on fall when fall gets here. To revel in it all.

I've been up to some pretty great stuff in the off-season, too. In January, I started meeting up with some of the girls from last year's training group. I've loved reconnecting with them and exploring some new routes. In this first picture, we're heading out for a 6 mile loop, running parallel to the mountain. Our trail was a very generous shoulder (meant for runners and cyclists), with a view over the entire Salt Lake Valley. You couldn't help but just stare out over the valley while you ran. Gorgeous!

And, winter in Utah is meant for skiing. Glorious, powdery skiing. I went once in January for work to Deer Valley (love!! It's a 4-star food resort with a skiing problem. And, winning big points with me, the ski trails are all well marked--no getting lost or accidentally heading down a black diamond!). Then on President's Day I took my older son to Brighton for his very first ever ski lesson. That kid was crazy in love with skiing, and has been asking to go back ever since. This is the view as I turned on to a slope, while he was with his group. 

This is the view to the west one evening. It's basically the same thing I get to see every single morning when I'm coming in from my run, just on the other side of the valley. This never, never, never gets old. Every morning when I see the opposite of this, I'm thankful for having laced up my shoes. 

With that, the 2015 Training Season is upon me! The first race on my 2015 dance card (run card?) is the Salt Lake Half, which I ran last year, too. It's not my favorite course, and not one I'll try to PR on, but its timing is impeccable for jump starting training for summer races. My A-Game race for the year is the Utah Valley Half, which I also ran last year and had an absolute blast completing with my STL running bestie.

What are my goals? For Salt Lake, really just to get my weekly mileage back up to some respectable level (I've barely cracked 100 miles yet this year....) and have fun on race day. For Utah Valley, I want to break 1:45. That's the goal. If you'd have asked me in 2007 whether I thought I'd ever set that as a realistic race goal, I would have laughed. But, let's do this.

Yes! I joined [a different] lot of us

I last left the ol' blog with a question: should I join the running group I checked out? That decision, and the conversations I had with a few of you about it, have set off a series of possibly-great-but-definitely-terrifying decisions, which I will present in order of least to most terrifying.

Least Terrifying Decision
They said come join the lot of us, and I said....    (btw, this line is from But Not the Hippopotamus, which you should read whether you have small children or not)

I said, I should come join a running group. Yes. But...not that one. Per Jodi's suggestion, I met up with the group a second time, this time for a regular Saturday run. It just didn't click for me. I think the issue was two-fold. One, despite having a dazzling array of pace-themed training groups& coaches, and the frighteningly low number of people in my training group, the "group" (a term I have to use loosely because I'm not sure it was anyone other than the coach and his son) took off for a distance appropriate for full marathon training, leaving me more or less on my own. Second, and as a result of the first point, I was the fastest person among those left behind by a fairly wide margin, and, isn't avoiding solo long runs the whole point of joining a group?

In an effort to find an alternative, I scouted out other local options and struck upon a Saturday-only training group run by the Salt Lake Running Company. Having missed the kick-off and having spoken to no one about it, I signed up. It was now or never. It's only 4 months, I told myself. Wait, 4 months? Not 6? Yes...because this group is training for the Salt Lake Marathon & Half in April, which leads me to Decision #2.

Second Least Terrifying Decision
So, I registered not only for the running group, but the Salt Lake Half, to be held in April. Since it's only 11 weeks out, I planned to use my trusty old RW sub-2 half training plan. I've used it several times before. I know I can do it, and I know it will bring me over the finish line in the anticipated time frame. No biggie. I didn't anticipate training so early in the year, but it will be good for me.

But then I thought...I have some pretty specific goals for the Top of Utah Marathon in September. Specifically, to not Fuel Fail a la Cleveland. And with appropriate fueling, turn in a shiny new PR. And if I wanted to do that, I would need to up my training.

immediately post-fuel fail at Cleveland, with the aforementioned Jodi (center, right)

Which brought me to...

Decidedly Terrifying Decision #1
...registering for the Utah Valley Half in June and [gulp] buying the sub-1:45 RW training plan for it. Now, before you jump all over me, yes, I know that dropping 10 minutes off my PR is probably too much. But I do think it's time for a new PR, and this is the next step up in training. It's time. Plus, it will help me to accomplish that last goal...

Terrifying Decision #2
...to attempt to sub-4 Top of Utah in September. I've long said that it would take me another 2 marathons to break that barrier. But, I'm going for it. Unapologetically, and fully aware that it's entirely possible that it won't happen. I bought the RW sub-4 marathon training schedule and it's in my handy dandy Excel training spreadsheet.

The net effect of this is that I'm scheduled to run about 1,000 miles between now and late September, when I've never done more than 850 in a year, and I'm asking myself to set 2 new PRs over the course of 3 races. I've bitten off a lot. Especially considering that the rest of life is CRAZY, but we won't get into that.

I told all of this to a good friend a few days ago and I thought her response was apt. Remember that time you called, enormously pregnant, and told me you were about to stand on a ladder and use power tools? This might be similar. 

Pretty much. Except that this time, it isn't going to end with said friend installing curtain hardware while I sit in a rocking chair. Ready. Set. Go.

Announcement #1: My next race!!

Those of you I'm linked up with on DailyMile might have already pieced this together, but for everyone else, allow me to spring the cat from the bag:

I signed up for my 8th half-marathon!!

On November 3rd I'll be running the Raleigh City of Oaks Half-Marathon with my BRFF (best running friend forever) Meg. Remember her? This girl. It's going to be epic. 

Raleigh will be our fourth half together, and I couldn't be more excited (in case you couldn't tell). Our goal is simple: break 2 hours. Why? Because that's always been the goal.  

Our first race together was the first 13.1 either of us ever ran. We'd trained with Team in Training and had high hopes. It was Chicago in August. It was hot. Being newbies, we didn't have experience dealing with adverse race conditions, and tried to push through. We turned in a 2:12 and I threw up about 6 times (lovely, right?) (non-graphic recap here).

Our second race was the Indy half in October 2008, when my older son was not quite 5 months old. I think the reason we didn't sub-2 that day is fairly obvious. 

That's me in the blue shirt about to cross the blue mat. Meg is next to me. 

Our third race was the Illinois half in May of 2010, just after we'd both graduated (recap here). That day was about so much more than running--or rather, running was about so much more than running. But, it wasn't our day on the course. We posted a new PR for Meg, but a slower time than we'd hoped for. 

Running in our hoods one Saturday that spring--running together

was about so much more than running

Soon after that race, she moved really really far west and I moved to STL. Then she moved again. Then I had another baby. Meanwhile we both had(have) demanding jobs. Then I moved again. And finally we found an opening to get together for a race. 

So, Raleigh. November. That's the goal: sub-2 our half. We can do this!! We're training "together" from a distance (we're 2000+ miles apart) using the Runner's World 2-hour half training plan, which I've used before and really like. The course is flat and the weather should be favorable. And coming from UT, running at sea level will feel amazing. SO EXCITED!!

Where I've been since June

My last post was a question about trusting race medals to a moving truck. I got answers all over the board--everything from "if it means a lot to you and they're small, tuck them in the car" to "this made me laugh--the truck has all your stuff, it's probably fine." So what did I do? Was it fine? Oh, so much to tell.

Our move started on the 4th of July when Mr. Joanna flew east with our kiddos. They were going to hang out with the grandmothers while my Dad and I drove from MO to UT, close on the new place by the 14th, meet the moving truck by the 16th and get kids' rooms put together. I left MO on July 8th. That day was insane, starting with a run with my STL running buddy and friend Rachel, then signing all the sale papers on that house, and overseeing the movers as they loaded the truck. When the truck left, Dad and I left town. Our drive across the country was uneventful, we closed  a day late but we closed, and got busy painting immediately.

Me & Rachel after my send-off run. I miss this girl.

My Dad in downtown Omaha when we stopped for lunch

Downtown Cheyenne, which is adorable

Buying paint for the boys' rooms!

Mr. Joanna and the kids and my Mom (Pepper) were scheduled to fly to UT on 7/16. All that happened, except that at 5pm on the 15th we learned that our moving truck had not yet left MO and didn't even have a driver assigned and had failed to give us adequate notice because "they were busy". It was too late to get the flights from the east coast re-scheduled.....so, they arrived to an empty house and I was helpless to do anything at all about it. My parents stayed at a hotel until they left on the 22nd, and we bought enough provisions to essentially camp in our house--not without some bumps in the road, but we made it work.

Our things didn't arrive until July 28th, and I'm 99% positive that one of the people who unloaded the truck stole a pair of my earrings (which might have looked real to an untrained eye but weren't). NEVER USE NORTH AMERICAN TO MOVE!  I seriously cannot stress this enough and will happily give anyone the full details should it be useful to anyone. They were awful.

I made a point to swim at the hotels during our drive west, and I started running pretty soon after arriving, once I wasn't painting all day every day. My Garmin's charger was held hostage on the moving truck, so I ran tech-free until our things arrived.

Running in the high desert is a totally different animal than Midwestern or East Coast running. First, there is little to no humidity. This means that people are seen running at 90 degrees or even hotter temps (not me). Second, it gets cool at night even on the hottest days. This means that if you run at dawn, even on the hottest day of the year, it's completely reasonable. Third, I'm at 4600+ feet in elevation. The air is thin. This means that while it took only a few days to acclimate for everyday activities, running left me sucking air for several weeks. Fourth, it ain't flat! My glutes and hammies have been getting a good workout here, and I can already tell it's making me a stronger runner. 

Post-truck (when we finally got our stuff), we've settled in pretty well. While it was not our intention, we have become urban farmers. We grow an insane amount of produce, from which we've made homemade blackberry ice cream, apple pie, applesauce, grape juice, grape jelly, pear jam, and a few other smaller things. On the whole, eating healthy, whole, natural foods seems really easy here. It's a lifestyle, and it's so easy to love, especially when you grow the food yourself!

Stay tuned--there are TWO big announcements on the fitness front. Welcome back to JoannaRuns, everyone! Show me some love!

Mondays in Love: Race Announcement!

I am thrilled to bring you the first Mondays in Love of 2013! I always enjoy writing these, but this week's especially has a warm place in my heart. This is big:

I have registered for my first endurance race post-baby!

You may recall that I vowed not to enter a half or full marathon until baby boy turns 1. In one way it's been hard to honor that promise, because, well, I love to race! Except in races where I bit it hard on the wall, I've generally had a blast running half and even full marathons (see here, here, and here). But at the same time, it also hasn't been that hard because I've been really, insanely busy over the past few months. There will be some reprieve from some of the chaos soon, which will free up some time for training. 

I looked for a race reasonably close to home, in April or May, and on a reasonably easy course. On the suggestion of a friend, I gave the Lincoln Presidential Half Marathon a second look and decided that it fit the bill. I will be running in Springfield, IL on April 6!!*

Training will officially begin late this month. I am SO excited about finally having a reason to make a training plan--complete with color coded runs and weekly mileage totals--for myself. I'm not shooting for a PR. I don't have a concrete time goal, but will set one once I do some speed work and time trial miles to see where I'm really at on pace. 

I love this time of year when people are picking races and setting goals. Do you have an exciting new race picked for the year? How did you handle goal setting for a return to racing?

*full disclosure: yes, this is a few days before baby boy turns 1. Whatevs. 

A bloggy meet-up and joint race announcement

The time has come for race announcements! And not just any race announcement, but a joint announcement with my bloggy friend Jess over at Run Jess Run.

A while back I put out a call for suggestions for spring races in the Midwest. Meanwhile, Jess was looking for a half-marathon (her first!) to register for. She lives in Michigan and I have family there, and the stars aligned and calendars worked so that we both decided to run....

THE MARTIAN HALF-MARATHON

which you can check out here. I am so excited to get to meet her! Also, I'm really looking forward to racing again in Michigan. Although it was painful (due to an injury), I really enjoyed running there a year ago (race recap here). AND I get to see family. Awesome piled on top of awesome.

And, although I'm nervous about the timing, I've also picked a spring full marathon. It shall be:

The Cleveland Marathon

I'm nervous because it's only 6 weeks after the Martian Half. I'm also nervous because I've never done a spring full. But, as Mamarunsbarefoot (a fabulous blog I just found) says:

"Everyone who steps out of their comfort zone, works, sweats, and yes even cries comes across that finish line changed forever, and yes they all win!!"

Time to put together my spring training plan and get excited about Half #6 and Marathon #3!!