Waffle

waf-fle [wof-uh l]
–to speak or write equivocally about: to waffle a campaign promise.

I waffle. I admit it. I’m a waffler!

I’ve been focused on my upcoming marathon, the KeyBank Vermont City Marathon, run in Burlington, VT on May 24, 2009. However, I’ve also kept one eye open for what to do next in order to plan out my running schedule for the rest of the year. (I know, I should focus solely on the upcoming race but it isn’t in my nature…I’m a long-range dreamer and planner).

So far, I have changed my post-June (the marathon in May will be followed by one month of recovery running) running schedule three times with very different ideas in mind. When I first set up my 2009 running schedule some time in December 2008, my summer and fall schedule was generic, I was thinking of doing a marathon but I didn’t have anything specific in mind so I had a general build up culminating in late October/early November.

However, I soon became enamored with the idea of doing an ultra. I found a 12-hour trail race taking place in September at a state park Mike and I had recently hiked. I started to think, “Yeah, I could do that! I can run for almost 5 hours for a marathon, if I slow down, I definitely could fun for more hours. Plus, how many times have I done an hours long run in the morning only to go on an hours long hike in the afternoon. I could totally do it and I bet I do 50 miles in that time! Yeah!” So, I researched an ultra plan that I thought was reasonable, made some changes for my own running style and preferences and changed my summer and fall running schedule.

For a few months, I was happy with this goal. I started ramping up my running mileage, bounced back from injury and began my training for the May marathon. Then, I started to get nostalgic for the marathon. I had to skip my fall marathon, Richmond, last year due to a scheduling conflict and then a backup fall marathon because of injury. I’ve heard such wonderful things about the Richmond marathon, I wanted to do it! This round of marathon training was going well so I thought I could bump up the next round of training by going from 4 days of running to 5 days a week and hopefully get closer to breaking the 4 hour barrier.

Back to my running schedule I went, shooting for the Richmond Marathon in mid-November. My projected cumulative mileage total for the year was lower but it would be faster running not the slower running of the ultra. “Richmond here I come…finally,” I proclaimed with the change.

This plan held for about a month but, recently, I began to have second thoughts. I realized that ever since I started running I’ve always been training. Would I actually enjoy running if I wasn’t running according to a training schedule? What if I took off the fall from any sort of training and just made it a goal to get up in to the 40s for weekly mileage and stay there for a few months, just to build a base. I’ve never built a base, I realized! I always train for a marathon, run the marathon, recover from the marathon for a month and then jump in to training for another marathon beginning the cycle all over again.

I made a running schedule to see what a base building plan would look like on paper (so to speak, I actually typed it up in an Excel workbook). It looked good. It looked solid. No more valleys and peaks in training for me; instead, a gradual buildup followed by steady mileage. I’m actually looking forward to the challenge of freeing my running from a formal training schedule in order to see if I still feel the same way about running.

So, for now, I’m saying no to the waffle. Cheers to a new challenge.

Today’s Daily Dozen:
Rest