First 50K of the 2019 season is tomorrow!

Wooooo!!!!!  I am excited!  First 50K of 2019 and the start of a new season and a new focus and a new me.

The last two years have been crazy.  Finally getting 50Ks into the world champs for women and then getting DQed led to being really frustrated and low on motivation.  So I made 2018 a fun year and did some longer stuff.  Finishing Paris-Alsace was a HUGE bucket list item for me and is on my top 5 greatest accomplishments.  We had fun in Spain for World Masters and I had some decent performances.  Then things went downhill a bit.  I lost motivation again.  Dave and I also made a huge investment and bought some properties in the next town over to renovate and rent.  We have been working like fiends trying to get stuff done.  Honestly at the expense of our training.  But it was fun, we were working together and setting us up for a great future, so it was worth it. 

Then in the beginning of December I finally got my Mojo back!  Going to Monaco to lobby for the women's 50K and seeing all the support really got me fired back up!  So I started really training again and it felt amazing.  I was involved in a study seeing how weight training affects runners and was some of the strongest I have ever been and I could really tell when I started walking.  I felt strong in ways I'd never felt strong before.

The weather at home wasn't super cooperative.  So I spent a fair amount of time training indoors at the school I coach for.  That meant limited times I could workout.  Three days a week I held morning practices before school.  Morning practice was the only time I could get access to the gym so my field event kids could practice.  (this really paid off as my thrower has absolutely crushed it, breaking the school record four times and is up to 34' 9"!)  Practice starts at 5:30 and if I want to walk before that I have to start even earlier.  So some days I'd start my workouts at 4:00.  Since I was staying up late working on our properties it led to getting tired.  I'd take naps during the day, but it was still rough. 

It's been such a weird year in terms of weather everyone was getting sick.  Half of the kids who showed up to practice were sick and all sorts of stuff was running around the school.  So I was working as hard as I could to stay healthy. 

Along the way I started putting in some really good sessions, doing two of my fastest 40Ks since January of 2017.  The national 5K didn't go well, I felt really off and didn't know why.  Ends up it was because I had an ear infection.  Two and a half weeks before the race I went to the walk in clinic because I was just feeling off and that's when I found out about the ear infection and that I also had strep throat.  Not exactly the lead up I was hoping for!

With our renovations we are getting a building ready to be a salon.  It's a HUGE space and we have a deadline of February 1st.  Some things took longer than expected so we've been working overtime.  The Monday and Tuesday before the race Dave and I installed about 600 square feet of hardwood flooring.  They were small pieces.  Over 48 hours I spent about 26 of them bent over cutting pieces and nailing them in. 

But you know what?  I'm so excited for tomorrow!  I'm always excited about a 50K.  I can't wait to see where I'm at.  I have goals, I have processes to focus on.  I'm excited about the other women who are out there racing.  Tomorrow's race was never the focus of my season.  It's a long year with some important goal races, and tomorrow is the least important of them.  I have a plan, I have motivation, I have support.  I have awesome athletes who motivate and inspire me and remind me what's important.  Tomorrow is going to be awesome! 

I love my sport.  I love the 50K.  And I can't wait to toe the line tomorrow!