2009 still on my mind

The other day I discussed my non-race goals. But you didn't possibly think that I wouldn't have my mind on races did you? Now that I've been running and working out for almost four months without a race in mind, it is time to turn some focus onto races for 2009. After such an up and mostly down year this year with running, I'm ready for some changes next year.

If you have looked closely at my blog this week, you'll notice a new counter -- it's there for a reason. I've said many times on here that I would not run the Shamrock Half Marathon again next year. After two years of doing that race, I wanted to do something different in the spring. While I still have the duathlon on my mind, I still want to do a "big" running race early in the year. So that's why I've decided to run the Charlottesville Ten Miler in April. While it's still a long distance, it's not a half marathon -- I'm still determined to stay away from half marathons until the second half of the year.

This will be just my second 10 miler. The first was in 2006 when I did the Virginia Ten Miler in Lynchburg -- the race that got me hooked on longer distances (and one that I'm thinking about doing again). As of right now, I'm not setting specific goals -- I just know that this is what I want to do for the spring.

After that, I'm still planning to do the Rock 'n' Roll Half in Virginia Beach on Labor Day weekend again. And then I still am not making any plans beyond that. I will not budge on that thinking. It helps keep me focused on things one race at a time, no matter how cliche that sounds.


In between my two big planned events, I'll likely run a few shorter races -- more than this year -- to keep me content. Too much of this year was spent being disappointed, so I'm determined to kind of go with the flow next year and see what happens. I would love new PRs, but I'm not going to stress myself out about it.