What's Next?

San Francisco is over.

Wow. I can't believe that I just wrote that, and that it actually is.

The San Francisco Marathon is now behind me. I trained for it, I traveled for it, I ran it, I enjoyed it, and now... well, now what?

It actually brings up a song that I adore. The first line of it anyway is appropriate


Arcade Fire - Half Light II

I'm not quite there with the rest of the first part of it but I will sing the first half-sentence over and over, because it's true.

Now that San Francisco's gone,
I guess I'll just pack it in.
Wanna wash away my sins,
In the presence of my friends

So yeah, I can't just "pack it in" right now. In fact, quite the contrary.

Here's why:

Marathon No. 8: If I thought seven marathons was great, I wonder what I'll think on Oct. 7. I'm registered for the Long Beach Marathon and on that day will indeed run 26.2 miles once more. It will be my fourth (and final) marathon of 2012 and of course my eighth overall. I've run the Long Beach Half Marathon before and had a fantastic time, so I'm quite looking forward to running the full there. I'm also looking for a better training cycle, with speedwork and cross-training tossed in.

It's still a ways away but I have been already sort of anxious about it. I wonder how mentally prepared I'll be, mostly for the training, and in what condition I'll be at when the race finally arrives. But time is on my side and how I handle the time between then and now will make all the difference.

School's Back: Wednesday is the first day of school. This is great. I will miss having my daughters around and will miss the lazy care-free mornings but I'm a bit of a slave to my routines. I got into the rhythm of taking my girls to school and then going on a run. That seemed to be the norm for most of the first part of 2012. I'm looking forward to having the time to run 6-8 miles or more. All of me needs those kinds of runs - my mind, my body, my legs, my psyche, everything. I swear there is no better feeling than cranking out an eight-mile run on a Thursday after having run that much or more on Wednesday and Tuesday. That's when I feel like I'm putting in some serious work and that's what I need to get back to. I can't recall the last midweek long-ish run I went on... well, I ran 18 miles on Wednesday June 12 but that was a unique situation. Aside from that, not a whole lot of opportunity to run eight miles in the middle of the week.

Lopers Starts Soon: My second year as a pace leader will begin soon enough, on Aug. 19 to be precise. Thats' when the Loma Linda Lopers begin the next clinic. I will get my group on Aug. 26 and will pace the group to a whopping two miles on that day. But I will need to be in top-top shape by then. Having just run a marathon I'm not that far off but I need those miles in the middle of the week to feel better physically and emotionally for the Sunday runs. I need to prove myself once more in order to better lead the group. I can't be sporadically slogging through runs and expect to be an effective pace leader. Not going to work.

So yeah, San Francisco's gone but that hardly means any down time for me. In fact, it just means it's time to start cranking up the work. But I'm rather looking forward to that.