As of last Saturday, I've officially started my fall race training. I feel like I completely bombed my spring training. Yes, I ran two races and ran them well. Yes, I met a bunch of awesome new people, and yes I'm pretty sure I increased my speed. However, with so much traveling in the spring and being sick a lot, I missed what felt like a ton of training group runs. I also felt like I lost a lot of my motivation. 

Since I didn't feel as accomplished as I'd wanted in the spring, I immediately made sure I signed up for a running group as soon as I moved to Charlotte. I am currently running with a group from Run For Your Life, and I've loved it so far. It reminds me so much of my Fleet Feet training crew, so I'm excited for this upcoming season. Here's a few of my goals for the next 14 weeks:

• Keep Motivated. In addition to travel and feeling sick a lot in the spring, frankly, I was just feeling burnt out. I'd been running for a year straight with a similar routine. I want to stay more motivated this time around. After a super lazy summer and a change of scenery, I'm hoping this will come easily. We'll see how motivated I still am after a few more weeks of my group's 5:30am runs though :)
• Focus on myself. I was a mentor for my last two training groups, which I absolutely loved and highly recommend to anyone that's been running for even a bit. However, since I just moved here and joined a new crew, I am only running as a participate this season. I'm excited to just focus on improving my form and speed over the next couple weeks. 
• Increase my speed. I definitely increased my speed during the spring from my marathon training last fall, but not to the point where I matched up with my initial 10-miler training. I'm hoping to better keep up with my speed work and my time measurements this season.
• Run a half. Believe it or not, I've never run a half marathon! I keep getting the itch to run another full, but everyone–including me–knows it's a bad idea after my post-race experience at OBX. Here's to running a half for the first time and getting a little stronger before I see if I can do another marathon.
• Do exercises other than running. This is something that's completely necessary in training for a big race, but I always leave out of my training. I generally just do my group training runs and very little other exercise (except maybe biking to a bar...). This season, I hope to mix it up with some yoga and core workouts in between my runs.