Four Seasons Challenge

Oh hey there. Maybe one day I'll be good at posting consistently for an extended period of time, but until then I'll just continue to apologize.

I always end up coming back here when I decide to do something crazy. However, this crazy is REALLY crazy. I had this bright idea and now two of my poor girlfriends will be suffering through this with me, so at least I have them :)

Basically, a new half-marathon was announced in the area for 2015. It is taking place in January, which means that there will be a half-marathon every season that a local running club sponsors. Because of that they decided to host this "Four Season Challenge" where you register for all four half-marathons up front and then as you complete each race, you get two medals; one for the race and one for the challenge. The four challenge medals then fit together to make one super medal. In retrospect, it sounded pretty cool! Now that January approaches, I am wondering what I was thinking!!!

Training started out great. It was a perfect fall for running, not too hot, not too cold and plenty of daylight. I ran a 5k in October and then two races in November the week of Thanksgiving (one 5 miles and one 4 miles). And then it got brutally cold and started getting dark at like 4pm and the last thing I want to do when I get home and it's cold and dark is run outside. I take it back. The last thing I want to do is leave my house to go to the gym. The second last thing is run outside. So then I choose not to at least do something active in my own home, but kids jeopardy has been on so me and the husband have been in fierce competition. He's the worst at motivation too. I say "tell me to go run" and he says "I don't understand why you think that is fun" and then we eat dinner. Happens almost daily! And then it's bedtime and I'm mad at myself for parking in front of the tv for the night and then he'll say "well why didn't you run today" and I pretty much could strangle him.

So we're about 5 weeks out at this point, and since I know I can at least run 5 miles (or at least could two weeks ago) I feel like I'm entering this half-marathon more prepared than some I've done in the past. Not proud of that fact, just stating a fact. Things I fear though are that it is a 4pm start time, so definitely going to be cold and dark. And it's on a college campus and is like 3.5 loops or something like that... so pretty much I am going to get lapped my fast people and that is not very good for morale. Finally, I am writing this sentence more so that I remember, but also because maybe you'll laugh like my mother when I told her, but I need to buy a headlamp. It's required for the race since we're running in the dark.

So goal here is there is more to report before race day, but I make no promises. My original posts were for each day of training, but Monday is my off day so maybe tomorrow?!?

xo