Year in Review

Total Miles: ~3,325
Total Time: a lot of minutes and hours
One serious injury in February
Two marathons
One trip to Japan

There's a lot to reflect on for 2009. I ran my first marathon, raced in the Izumo Ekiden for the second time, moved to Charlotte and got a new job.

The year started with me training for the Austin Marathon in February. In the build up I got injured with my only severe setback of the year. My achilles hindered my training and I missed the race, but was still able to watch Owen run his first 'thon. I would have to wait another couple of months to debut at the marathon distance.

Through March and April I was back to training for the Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon. My ambitious goal of debuting sub-2:25 was out the window, but I still wanted to run a competitive race. In what were mediocre at best conditions I ran 2:27:19 to win the 9th Annual OKC Marathon. It felt good to finally run a marathon and not suffer the late race debacles. The distance takes a lot of patience in both the training and the race itself.

The marathon was my first race that was longer than 10k. Most people usually run a half or 15k prior to stepping up to the legendary distance. Not me. I decided that for my next race I wanted to run a half-marathon in Joplin, Missouri. The Boomtown Days Half-Marathon was offering some prize money and I wanted to go cherry-pick the winnings. Well, a few Kenyans caught wind of the race and came down from Columbia, MO. I failed to run aggressively and missed out on the cash. I also discovered that the half-marathon is an awful distance. Maybe it was just the hot weather and hilly course, but I was in rough shape afterward. There is no time to relax in the half-marathon, it's like 10k effort, but for twice as far. In the marathon I warmed up the first 10, in the half you're racing hard from the gun. Not fun. I need to run another one at some point, but this race put a bad taste in my mouth.

I spent the rest of the summer training for the 5k. I planned to move to Charlotte at the end of the season and since I didn't have a job lined up, I thought I might as well race the CVS Downtown 5k. The race serves as the qualifier for the Ivy League Ekiden team that is sent to Izumo, Japan each year. I didn't run nearly as fast as I hoped, but I still qualified to race in Japan. My training continued to focus on the 5k distance up until leaving for Japan. Since I was living in Charlotte, I took advantage of being around the Queens University team. Meagan was injured at this point of the season, but I managed to workout with the Queens men a few times.

My trip to Japan was great fun but the race was a disappointment. We had a great squad of guys including a handful of sub-14 minute 5k guys. Ben True, Dave Nightingale, Lucas Meyer and Zac Hine were all on the trip to Izumo. It was fun meeting and running with those guys for the week. Looking back now, I was pretty rundown and over-trained by October. I ran a terrible split and the team finished outside of the top 10 which is the yearly goal.

Upon returning to the states I was able to attend a former teammate's wedding and catch up with some great friends in DC. When I got back to Charlotte I started an internship and learned "real world" big kid stuff. The internship didn't last long because I was offered a job in Austin, TX. I accepted and started working with some great brands immediately.

I didn't really have anything to train for during the rest of the year. I was healthy and motivated to run, but had no grand plans for a big race. I wasn't sure what the spring was going to bring me and I decided, along with my coach, to build a base. A couple illnesses derailed my true base efforts and I found myself limping into December with fewer miles than I had planned. The Thunder Road Marathon was coming up and a few days prior I had the thought of running. I managed to run better than expected. That race served as a jump-start to my training for 2010. The potential to run fast for 26.2 miles is a definite possibility. I look forward to training smart and racing hard in the New Year.