Post-Marathon Plans

After my marathon I’m planning on taking a break for running, at least for a few months. My foot isn’t completely healed, and I want it to be 100% when/if I start training for the Ragnar Relay and the Mohawk Hudson half marathon this fall. Ultimately I want to be a better and faster runner, and that can’t happen unless I’m 100% injury free. Originally, my goal for the MHR half was to finish in 2:03:59 or faster, but whether or not that happens with a few months off from running …we’ll see. I’m just tired of constantly feeling pain in my feet.

I’ve been dreading most of my runs lately (probably not a good thing 4 days before a marathon, but oh well). I’m just ready to run the race, give it my all, put running on the back burner for a while.

I also want to lose some weight, and I feel like distance running hinders weight loss, at least for me. I’m at a heavier weight now than I was when I started this blog and its not a weight I’m happy with.

I want to focus on strength training, too, which I usually never have time for when I’m running 3-4 times a week. No running is going to free up a lot of time for other fitness activities and I’m really excited to focus on new things for a while.

Some of my summer non-running goals include:

• Strength train 3x a week (I just signed up for a 10 week kettlebell class!)
• Yoga 2x a week
• Barre (until my studio passes run out)
• Spinning/cycling
• Hiking

And for eating…

• Clean eating: cutting back on carbs and focusing on mostly whole, non-processed foods
• Cutting out sweets for at least a month to help get rid of my sugar addiction

Hopefully by the time fall rolls around, I’ll weigh less, be stronger and hopefully injury-free in time to start training.