I intended to publish this post many weeks ago. Today starts week six of a new running training season. WEEK SIX. Yes, not only am I continuing to run after my marathon, but I am mentoring the half and full training program at Fleet Feet Carrboro again! It's been a whirlwind first month of training with so many bad weather days and two weeks off for vacation (not to mention a month off for the holidays and marathon recovery), but it's been so great to reunite with my old running group and get back into a solid exercise routine. 

This will be the first season that I'm not actually running the promoted race at the end (the Rock n' Roll Raleigh half and full). While I'm a little bummed that I'll be out of town for the race date, I'm excited to just have fun and focus on mentoring this season rather than have race day jitters and stress take over at the end. While I'm a bit late in writing these out, I've also missed tons of running days, so I thought it would be good to still list out what I'm looking forward to for the rest of the season to help keep me motivated:

Meeting new people

One of the main reasons I joined my training program last spring was to meet other people to run with. I had such a great and motivating group last season, I'm excited to meet even more people who enjoy running in my new pace group!

Creating my own training plan

Not going to lie, this has been tough! One great thing about the training programs is that someone has put in all the effort to create our training plans, so all I'd have to do is show up ready to run. Since I'm running different races at different times though, I'm looking forward to seeing if I can create my own running and tapering schedule–and stick to it!

Running half the distance

I am only mentoring the half marathon runners this season. While I had a blast during the full training in the Fall, it will sure be nice to not have four hour long runs on my Saturday mornings anymore :)

Increasing my speed

Being a mentor means I'm supposed to be focusing on my running group members more than myself during the season. I'd be lying though if I said I didn't hope to increase my speed a little! I rang in at 8:25 during my time trial six weeks ago, 22 seconds faster than I was in August, and a whole minute faster than I was during my time trial a year ago! I'd love to shave off a couple more seconds by the end of the program.