Running with Jack

Thank you again for your encouraging words, this has helped me fight the psychological battle going on in my mind the last day or two.

A New Plan

My wife was in school last night so I sat in my favorite living room chair, propped my feet up and read through the marathon schedule for this year. I am considering one the following events for the Fall:

- The Pirmasens Forest Marathon on September 10th (10% asphalt)
- The Black Forest Marathon on October 8th (60% asphalt)
- The Roentgenlauf Marathon or 63K Ultramarathon (10-20% asphalt)

My first choice is Pirmasens, its only about 70 minutes from our house, whereas the other two are 3-4 hours.

Some Old Business

I still very much want to do the Westerwald 50K Fun Run on May 25th. This was very much a factor in my decision to DNF on Sunday.

I also plan on running the 1st Annual Stutensee 10K Fun Run on April 2nd. This is a local event and I want to be a part of it. I am not particularly concerned about setting any records, I am just going to go run for me.

There are a bunch of 10K and half-marathons throughout the summer that I may participate in. I was thinking about a 63K Ultramarathon on July 22, but I don’t know yet. I’m not hungry for this yet, I think I first need to get over the DNF hump.

Getting over the DNF Blues

I caught myself looking at the marathon schedule for April. It kind of hurts that I trained so long and didn’t complete the marathon on Sunday. This is part of the DNF struggle. I was reading in a book by Dan Glover last night that one of the first reactions after a DNF is to seek a new event to “prove” to one’s self and the world that we are not a failure. There is a marathon on April 2 that I could run and would have a very good chance of finishing. But I sat and thought about if for awhile last night and decided that I don’t need to prove anything to anyone and I already know that I can complete a marathon.

I don’t know if this makes any sense to anyone but me, but this is my way of putting a bad day behind me and getting on with my next project. I know from my own training that not every day is perfect, we have to take the bad with the good and keep going. I’ve started a list of things that may have contributed to my DNF and when I’m done I will hang it up next to my training schedule as a reminder to help me avoid making the same mistakes again. I will probably post the list when I'm done with it, maybe it's useful for someone.

And Life Goes On

So that said, my legs feel much better today, I may take a short jog tomorrow night to loosen up the running machinery. Tonight I might go upstairs and dust off my free weights – it’s been a long time since I did any upper body training.