I pretty much took the weekend off, after all.
On Saturday, I had to take my car in for service and some other errands. By the time I returned home I was actually fairly exhausted, a good deal more than usual. I also still had the same lingering hamstring soreness from earlier that week. I decided not to train and just took it easy. In fact, I turned in rather early, with the sunset. And that was around 6:45pm.
Yesterday, Sunday, I rode long on the spin bike, about 105 minutes, but otherwise nothing else. Again, I took it easy, outside of going to the store and doing laundry.
Today I feel like a weird ball of energy… maybe this is what it feels like to have energy and not be tired? I do get so used to being tired and exhausted from training and life that perhaps I mistake having energy for being jittery? I haven’t had coffee yet. I slept reasonably well last night, and though I didn’t sleep much Friday night I definitely slept well Saturday night.
In any case, I also don’t have hamstring soreness this morning. Two days off allowed that to dissipate. I will slowly ramp today back into training, as we’re now into peak week… maybe peak fortnight, depending on how much I can handle next week as well. That will be the last week of intense training, as I’ll then have two weeks to Indy and will begin to taper.
I didn’t watch Sunday’s Chicago Marathon, and of course I’ll be working today so I won’t be watching Boston. Is it exciting, or do I have any feelings of missing out? Not really. It’s great to see people chasing their victory laps. But I’ve had mine, and hopefully will complete one of my own next month.
I don’t get the dreaded FOMO (fear of missing out) much at all these days. I feel comfortable mentally about where I’m at, even if I’m not yet where I want to be. I can continue working where I’m at on where I want to go, without seeing someone else’s victory lap and feeling bad, antsy, FOMO, etc. Good for them, and I still feel good about where I am.
I ran Chicago three years ago (the dreaded Hiccups Marathon), and do want to run it again someday (even if I find the massive Chicago crowds annoying). I like the course and experience, and much like Vancouver 2019 I want the next time around to go right and be able to run that marathon out on my terms. It’ll also be good to see some of my old Chicago people once again. It may not be next year, but at some point I’ll run it again.
Boston? Maybe in the (admittedly unlikely) event I qualify, sure. But otherwise, I’m not interested. It’s a pedestal marathon for many, but I don’t think nearly as much of it as others.
As for more accessible marathons… Vancouver 2022 remains a possibility. I had actually considered not running another marathon for at least a year or two, and focus on training for other distances.
But after all the problems I’ve had with the Indy training cycle, I want to take a month or two off from hard training and then it’d be nice to take advantage of the Vegas winter conditions (actually ideal for marathon training) and get it right this time. Vancouver, presuming they hold the race (I think we’ll be out of the Coronawoods by then and they’ll do it), would be an ideal end goal.
That’s not to say I couldn’t still focus on those other events, and maybe just restrict my Vancouver training to a long run every week or two, and a longer tempo/pace run every week or two. Any other training would still benefit my marathon fitness, should I decide to run it next May. As long as I did a marathon-specific run every week, I could still maintain and improve that long fitness to some degree.
That’s to be figured out down the road, though. For now I still need to get ready for Indy, and this week of wall to wall training is all about that.