Perspective

The Olympic Marathon Trials occurred almost a year ago, and it was an amazing event with huge crowds and excitement you could feel in the air. Within weeks of that race, all major events were being canceled.  After taking some time off post-marathon, life had basically turned to quarantine - solo running, hiking from home with family, attacking the closest strava segments to my house and getting groceries delivered. After those initial weeks and months, we were able to get back to running outside in a small group while maintaining appropriate distance. Races like the Bolder Boulder were forced to turn virtual, and it was easy to get behind doing a 10K time trial on the roads and supporting events that were so important for the community and athletes. 

That phase lasted several months and I got in great shape running PRs in time trials and putting in base mileage work. I did several virtual road race events including forming a team with Nick Willis, Reid Coolaset and Mason Ferlic to run the  MA RA TH ON virtual marathon relay, the Bolder Boulder virtuALL 10k and Stride for Kauai Half Marathon.

After these virtual events in the summer, a few groups turned into small event organizers and I had two opportunities to race in person - The Las Vegas Gold Elite Half Marathon in October and The Marathon Project in December. While I didn’t achieve my goals in either the Olympic Trials Marathon or the Marathon Project, I did have a great year in other events with PRs in 1500m, mile, 3k, 15k and ran two half marathons in 1:03:48 (Naples) and 1:04:04 (Vegas). The fall was actually my best marathon build-up in terms of training with impressive consistency, some of my best workouts and time trials, including a 29:38 10K on the roads.

​Enter 2021. Here we are nearly a year later and for the past months the running community has seen race cancelations posted on nearly a daily basis. Without an upcoming race to look forward to, running simply hasn’t been as much as a focus and I truly miss having that high level of gumption for working really hard towards a goal. I’m hopeful, and I think that most of us are, that fall races will be back. However, it’s been hard to not feel like I have just been going through the motions over the past 10 weeks.

Mario Fraioli’s morning shakeout was in my inbox this morning. His first paragraph was the exact opposite of how my January and February had been: “The last 7-8 weeks have been without a doubt the most consistent and enjoyable stretch of intentional running I’ve experienced in quite some time. No pressure, only possibility.” 

​Perspective. While I’ve been struggling with the lack of races, Mario looked at it as a positive with no pressure, only possibility. Maybe it’s time to reframe this season of life to one of hope and possibility.  When I feel like I even tend to over-race because my motivational fire is always burning hot, the last few months felt more like I just had the pilot light on. Mario’s words just turned up the dial on that motivational fire. After moving in the next couple weeks, I’m really excited to take the time to find the right goals that internally have me roaring. Possibilities…