In five days I will run my 12th marathon and Mom will run her 3rd. Not only will I run by 12th marathon but I will break my nearly two year drought of marathon running. (I last ran a marathon in July 2018 in San Francisco.) I have signed up for two marathons since then, Salt Lake City and Zermatt but in both cases dropped down to the half. To get to this point still committed to the marathon is a big step for me.

Yet, when I first declared that I would run the Atlanta Marathon, that declaration came with a pretty audacious goal. I wanted to take on the training full stop, give myself no excuses, build up my tenacity so that I could finish under 3:44. I knew it would take some work but I committed to the hard work, especially with the mental training. I also knew that this high bar also held a high likelihood of a lack of success.

As training began, the work felt hard but I had some immediate, unexpected successes which increased my dedication to the workouts, the weekday workouts at least. As the semester progressed, the long runs got longer and other things cropped up in the calendar, the long run workouts increasingly deviated from the plan. Towards the beginning of the already slightly truncated training plan, I had a week where due to travel plans I ran a long run on a Sunday. Additionally, I pushed through a challenging strength training routine the day before ART (active release therapy) before running home and then completing a speedwork session the following day. When Saturday came, only six days after the previous long run and closely after a lot of other hard work. I cut that run in half because my legs just did not have the strength to complete the whole thing. That changed the trajectory of the long run build up; I had to pay special attention to this because of the long time since I last trained for a marathon.

A handful of other factors also played a part in the final portion of training. One, at the end of the first week of the taper, my lower back started acting up, not enough to warrant skipping any run or workout yet at the same time that meant foregoing the workout portion of the long run, something I have not done at all really this cycle. (Thankfully it stopped being cranky fairly quickly.)

One could probably figure out earlier in this post that I have adjusted my goal for Atlanta and I’m okay with that. I knew it would take a lot to get to that point, a nearly perfect training cycle. As I just described, I had a successful but not flawless cycle. A couple training workouts at supposed marathon pace I completed but with more difficulty than I should have had. This showed me that I needed to reframe my goal, not give up entirely but modify it a little.

Then a thought occurred to me. I had already scouted out the Ottawa half marathon in an attempt to add another state or country to my half marathon list. Then I started to wonder about running the full instead of the half. Then after those previous workouts, I thought about shifting my marathon focus to Ottawa instead, a flatter race, and one where I will have a much more solid base using the Atlanta training cycle.

So, I spent all those words to say this. Instead of a 3:$4 goal, I will run with Mom to pace her to a new PR. My gold/A standard will be 3:50. Our silver/B goal will bring us across the line under 4 hours. Our bronze/C goal will get us to the finish safe and sound. Here’s to marathon #12 and chasing goals. In a week or so I will return and talk about my Ottawa plans.