6 miles at lunch with Quint.
I'm at a bit of a crossroads with running right now. I'm sure I will continue running, most days, and I'll keep going to track and the Sunday long runs. Mostly to see my friends.
But I don't feel like training right now. I'd like to race well, and see good results, but I'm not sure I have the drive (and willingness to sacrifice) that that would take.
It's a few things. I put so much energy into training for Twin Cities last summer that I think I burned myself out, in retrospect. Or maybe not. I really enjoyed that training cycle, but I am not ready to recreate it.
There's an internal project at work I've been investing a lot of time in. It looks like it will adopted by a couple clients soon, and I'm hopeful about its prospects. I do a lot of that development after the kids go down, and I'm really enjoying it. I put on the headphones and focus and it feeds a drive similar to running my head off. But I'm not sure it's compatible. When I run 100+ miles a week, I'm pretty much worthless by 8pm.
And more significantly there is my family. Things have only gotten busier in the last year. Since we moved 8 months ago, we're 15 minutes farther away from everything - school, shopping, activities. That doesn't sound like much, but when you double it for round trips, it adds up. And since the girls are older there are more things going on. We have an awesome Dad/daughters karate night now, and there's the usual homework/meal prep/life maintence stuff. It's just so much easier with less running.
I don't see an easy path to integrate all of it. If I was truly focused on racing now, I probably could do a lot of it. But without the underlying drive, it's not happening.
I explained all of this on Sunday to my friend Lee. He just smiled at me and told me I'd be back at it in a month or two. I'm not sure about that, but we'll see.
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