Vermont City Marathon Rematch is On

I’ve been debating heavily for the past month or so about whether or not to follow through with my plan to run a spring marathon. Mostly, my hesitation stemmed from the feeling that I’m not yet at a fitness level to handle the training needed to run one. However, writing the series of blog posts on “Why I Run,” reminded me of the personal meaning of a Memorial Day marathon, and I decided that I would ramp up training a bit and see how I felt. Well, this past Sunday I completed a 12-miler around town, and I have to say that I felt great. This was my longest run by four miles since the Manchester Half-Marathon last November. I was initially a bit worried about how I would feel, but I managed to keep an 8:00/mile pace throughout, and the run wasn’t nearly as taxing as I had expected. I’ve been dealing with some nagging muscle pain in my left hip that started after doing hill repeats with my running club (too hard, too soon), and although the hip ached a bit during the run, it didn’t interfere too much with my stride. Getting out on the road for a nice long run was great, although the snow flurries that were falling from the sky reminded me that winter is really hard to escape in NH. Recovery went equally well, and today, only two days later, I was able to handle 6 quarter-mile reps with the club at a pace well below my 5k pace from a few weeks ago. Given these encouraging developments, I took the plunge and signed up officially for a rematch with the Vermont City Marathon in Burlington on Memorial Day weekend.

My goal for Vermont is not to try for a BQ, but to run this as a memorial for my daughter. I’ll be happy with a modest improvement, but finishing is all that really matters to me. There will be other races and other times to try to reach personal goals, but right now I’m focused on what is most important – my family.