Her Next Marathon

Hey there!

Well it’s about time I dusted off my running shoes and signed up for my next marathon! It’s been almost three years since I ran my last one . Which I only did, because I qualified for Boston before we ever knew we would have Rylee Joy. Now that RJ is almost 4 ( crazy) our season of life is slowing down and I am honestly not as burnt out like I was right after my last race. I am so glad that I listened to my body and took a long break from marathon training. Since 2006 I have trained for a marathon back to back to back. Doing a total of 10!

The bug is back! I am so excited to be running more. I even found a couple running buddies out here in Arizona, but I have also found the Revelation Wellness running podcast and that has changed running solo for me. I used to hate running alone and now I don’t mind it as much. I love how encouraging the podcast is and how fed and refreshed I feel after. I am only on week 2 of training and my training plan is only a total of 11 weeks. I have a pretty good starting base and I know that if I trained for anything more I would get burnt out. This most likely will be the only marathon I run this year, so I want to make sure that I enjoy every bit of it. I am also only running three days a week and cross training the other three. I am taking one day of rest which will come right after my long run days. I will be doing some spin and TRX.

Here is a link to my plan in case you are interested. As you can see I will not be running more than 40 miles a week when training for this marathon, I am 100% more about running less quality miles over quantity. The cross training I will be doing will be a lot of HIIT workouts, cycling and TRX core work. I want to make sure more than anything I do not overtrain and hurt myself. If I need an extra rest day I will take it! My goal for the race is to run under 4 hours for sure, but to finish and feel strong.

So the race that I chose to do this year is local and do you want to know a secret? I have NEVER done a local marathon before. Not one have I been able to sleep in my own bed the night before. So that is going to to be so nice! I love to travel for races and make a fun trip out of it. However this year I am living in a whole new state, so to me it’s kind of like doing a marathon in a new place. The race I will be running is called the Hippity Hopp Marathon in Peoria on Sunday April 9, 2017. They also have a half marathon, 5k, 10k and a 4 mile run! It’s the weekend before Easter as well as my birthday MONTH! Arizona is beautiful in the spring so it will be the perfect training weather.

The wonderful Hippity Hopp Race folks have gave me a discount code for all my readers! Use NHERSHOES15 at check out and get 15% off your registration.

Questions: Have you signed up for any races this year? Are you planning to? In Arizona one’s I should know about?