A new year with endless possibilities!

I will be the first to admit that I was a pretty awful blogger. I intended to keep this blog as a mini-memoir of what I’m doing, how I’m training, where I’m shooting, and how my races went. I had a busy summer with shooting weddings and training for Portland marathon. The marathon was incredible. Of course, I didn’t write a race report. I may still try to write one, but I’m sure I’ve forgotten most of the important stuff. The basics: it was a pretty hilly course. Running up to and over the St. John’s bridge was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in a race. I still PR’d with an official time of 4:36:07. It was a really neat race and an awesome city to run in. I took quite a bit of time to recover but resumed running to do a little training for the Noodleini, a 15K in De Pere. Last year, I decided to run it in the Athena category. It turns out that Athena and Clydesdale categories are sort of debated in running circles. For those of you that don’t know, Athena and Clydesdale are weight-based categories for heavier runners (compared to age group categories). I ran my hardest and amazingly took 2nd in my division. I got a trophy! It was the first time that l felt Ike I could be a competitor as a runner, and it was an unexpected feeling. There were six runners in that small division last year, and the girl that beat me had split times of 8:45. This year, I was bound and determined to beat her. Of course, I didn’t know who I was racing against, so every woman on that race course became my competition. My 2010 splits were 9:12, so it was a lofty goal, but I came in this year with a new PR of 1:22:06 and split times of 8:48. Turns out that our division had multiplied from 6 to 14, the winner was rocking 7:30 splits (at over 150 lbs… What an athlete!), and I placed 5th. I missed placing 4th by just a few seconds. Argh.
In any event, I was incredibly proud of my improvement and welcomed the offseason with open arms.
Five weeks of lots of sleep, lots of Christmas cookies, less running, more strength training, and ballroom dancing a couple times a week, and I am 8 pounds heavier but anxious to resume training. I’ve had a sore ankle for a while… I had it checked out and it appears that there is some inflammation in the joint. I’m not doing much running until this heals, but I’m finding all sorts of other things to do for a workout! 🙂
I’m currently working on picking out my spring marathon, while trying to work around an increasingly busy wedding schedule. I’ve got Grandma’s marathon in my sights up in Duluth. We’ll see! The Bock run is on the schedule in March, and the rest of the season is open and ready to be filled in.