P.M.S

No, it doesn't mean what you think.  Try "post-marathon-syndrome", combined with a little "pleaseletmepassmy-midterms-syndrome", lol.  Put these two together and it's been a pretty lame couple of weeks on the running front. I took my standard 4 days off after the race and tried to start running again on Friday, but it's been pretty craptastic due to a combination of my hamstrings still being really tight, and the fact that I've had 3 major midterms since the marathon that required more than a little bit of studying and caused me more than a little bit of stress.

I think I was a little bummed out the week after the marathon too, obviously not because I was disappointed in my race [on the contrary...I was flying high on cloud 9 about my performance] but it was just a bit of a letdown...which I supposed is fairly normal to experience after something big has just happened.  As nice as it's been taking a bit of a break after the race, it's been weird knowing that I'm not going to be doing that again for awhile.  I had already decided that I wasn't going to run Boston until 2012, which turned out to be probably a good thing after the race closed in 8 hours...I can tell you that there's no way I would have signed up the day after Baystate even if I WAS planning on running.  I feel like I'm making a smart choice in taking the opportunity to try to run some fast times and bring my PRs down on the track this spring, since as long as I'm young and still speedy there's really no time like the present, but I have to say I think that I might be more built for the longer distance races.  And I really like the marathon.  Sure I bitch and moan about the Sunday long runs and there are days when it feels like I'm skimping out on all sorts of real-life responsibilities because I need to go do a workout, but there is something about the marathon and the training for it that's different for me than for all other races.  So I may feel like there's a little something missing this winter/spring when I'm not pushing myself through long runs in hurricane-like Nor'easters and such, but then again, I'm probably still going to be doing plenty of LR's in the higher teens as part of my "higher mileage = faster at all distances" discovery, and if I start seeing things in the 19:30 range on the track, well then, I'm sure I won't be whining about missing the marathon anymore haha.

So I will definitely be doing track in the spring, and my original plan was to focus on XC in the fall, but I made the interesting discovery that my time at Baystate gave me an auto-qualifier for NYC.  To be completely honest the NYC marathon isn't something I'd ever really considered because a) I had no delusions of hitting the qualifying time, and I don't like leaving my fate up to a lottery and b) I don't really think I like big-city marathons [which reminds me of a post idea I have entitled "why I like running Baystate better than Boston"]....but since the qualifying standard is so much faster than Boston, it is slightly enticing.  I mean, or I could just run Baystate again....I think now and forever, in the rest of my marathon career, I will always consider Baystate my "home" course.  Anyway, next fall is a long way off and I have plenty of time to figure it out.

That was a fairly pointless rambling.  Apologies. It happens here frequently.  On a more exciting note, since my own training is pretty lame at the moment, I think I've finally convinced Andrew to start running a little bit with me!! I told him I want to get him up to half an hour of running, and I'll never make him run more than that if he doesn't want to...seems fair, right?  So far we've only gone a little over a mile but he's doing pretty well with running straight and not stopping.  I tried to get him running a couple summers ago but I think he had the tendency to run too fast for his level of fitness and he hated it because of that...it's much more pleasant taking it slow, building up time, and then working on speed.   I also have a friend in my PT program who doesn't run much these days, but wants to train for a half and she wants me to help her train...I think it would be fun coaching her, I don't have much experience training a beginner besides myself, but I think it would be a fun challenge.

Well, it's been a decent 2 weeks of rest - honestly, couldn't have come at a better time, because I had so much studying to do, and it was sort of nice not having to feel guilty about skipping a run because I needed to study.  But I've probably lost some fitness and definitely feel kind of lame...it's high time I got back on a solid weekly mileage schedule to start the buildup for indoor track!

And here's a fabulous picture from Baystate to finish off this post

There is nothing in the world to compare to this feeling.