The first thing I had to do is start to run again. By June of 2012 I pretty much stopped running. A few times from Mid 2012 until March of 2017 I managed to get a few weeks to a couple of months of training in.
What really kind of ticked me off was in 2014 I headed over to the Northeast Harbor 5-miler with Autumn who was running it. I hadn't run in many months but decided to sign up. I ended up running 35:13 for 28th place and I was like holy shit, I got to do something. In 2015 the PD had a relay team for MDI marathon and I managed to get myself into shape to run first 12 miles in just under 70 minutes. That was my longest training stint, a couple of months. Finally in November and December of 2016 I got almost a month in, started with a couple miles a day, then somehow I got injured and didn't run again until March 2017 and since then it's gone well.
As anyone can see from my schedule, I've run a shitload of races this year since I started back running in March. Started with the Eastern States 20-miler, even though I hadn't run more than a 12 mile run before that, but needed to get a long run before Sugarloaf marathon, and other than this 20-miler, the rest of my long runs for Sugarloaf didn't exceed 16.3 miles.
I paid for that at Sugarloaf, but 2:35 for second place with some pretty shitty training, I was happy to finish as well as I did.
Normally, 25+ races in a year is way too much, but the best way to get in shape after a break is to race. For one, I'm a pretty competitive person, so early on I was getting my butt kicked pretty bad, which motivates me.
Later as I got in better and better shape I was finishing top 3 in all of the local stuff. The next step, go out of state. Maine's got some big races, but going to New England X-C champs was good for me, because I really got my ass kicked, 67th place. Finally, going to US X-C masters race really hammered home how far I still have to go, but although I only got 33rd there, I didn't feel like the lead pack would have been out of my fitness level if I hadn't gone out and led the first mile. Stupid.
I was kind of planning on the US 50-k champs in March, but after running low on Iron in November and the beginning of December, I had no motivation to get the long runs I needed. As it turns out, I'm going to get a bunch of indoor track meets in with US Masters champs in March as the goal. I've got a free place to stay in DC, and although I really want to run the Masters Road grand prix, it's going to be too expensive to go to some of those.
So I'm going to head to southern Maine for some bigger races, do some of the New England grand prix races, and do the US champ races that happen to be in the New England area. My big trip for next year will be going to Washington State for US Masters marathon champs in October.
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