Next Up!

I've mentioned this before, but I will not be running the A1A marathon (or half) in 2020. I love that race for many reasons, not least of which is the location (giving me an excuse to see friends and family) and that it has always fallen on a long weekend near my birthday.

Next year, though, A1A is on a different weekend; they've moved it up an entire month to January, in fact. I don't like racing in January because I'm never able to train through the holidays, and because winter break goes through January 8, I hate taking time off work because the month is already cut short.

I thought this meant I'd have to write off a Fort Lauderdale race completely, but then Kristina brought up that she and Adam have run the 13.1 Fort Lauderdale relay and that piqued my interest! I don't feel inclined to run a half marathon this fall, but a half relay sounds fun!

Matt immediately agreed. We had some frustrating issues signing up and I had to go back and forth with the race organizer and the Chronotracks tech support guy for literally months. But, finally, things are set up and Matt and I are registered! I'm pretty pleased with our team name:

Get it?

The race is on Veterans Day weekend, so there's no need to take the following Monday off. We'll stay with Oden, like we always have for A1A, and we'll get to see Steph and the family, though not at the finish line.

As for training...My runs have mostly been 3-4 miles these days; volleyball has started so that's made running a little challenging. I only have a couple weeks 'til race day, including Chattajack, which complicates matters. I'm a little nervous about meeting my training goals for this race, since my timeline is super abbreviated, but here's the plan, starting this week:

Is it weird that I prefer to plan on a calendar rather than using an actual training app?

I can't plan to run on the days we have actual games, but I can run after practices. This year we have the entire week off for Thanksgiving, so I'll definitely be able to use that week to my advantage.

I will be using this Ft. Lauderdale relay as a way to build a base to start increasing mileage for Ragnar instead of looking at the distance as a goal in and of itself. Even still, Ragnar isn't that far out and I haven't been doing any kind of long runs yet, so we'll see how that goes!

My training has focused more on elevation than distance; I hope that doesn't end up being a mistake!

All in all, I'm actually pretty happy that the races I'm interested in this fall increase in distance gradually - it's like I actually planned ahead or something! As I posted previously, I'm also happy to be doing something a little different race-wise this fall and winter. Change is exciting, and in this case, definitely of the good!

ABK