Is it wrong to start planning my next races when I haven’t even finished my first marathon?
I’ve been thinking about doing a sprint triathlon for a while. As much as I love running, I know my body could benefit from some cross training. Unfortunately, swimming would involve joining the gym in my ‘hood to use the pool. Right now I use my office gym (free!) so adding that cost would hurt. I am going to wait to see how I’m feeling the next month or so, but I’m eying this race: http://www.tricolumbia.org/Sprint/
Since I have used Hal Higdon’s training programs successfully for my half and full marathon, I would use his plan which calls for 8 weeks of training. The only issue is that the first week of training would fall on the last week of me and my husband’s honeymoon in Spain. However, the more I think about it the less of an issue I think this would be. I really love to work out on vacations because I can take my time and not be rushing around like a mad woman to get to work/run errands/etc. I’m going to keep my eye on my finances but I’m leaning toward, yes, I will run my first sprint tri this summer.
The second race I have been thinking about since this past fall, when several of my friends ran the Marine Corps Marathon. It’s a huge race that goes through DC and VA. The time of year is generally perfect race temps. Plus I’m looking forward to training for a marathon in the warm months as opposed to the bitter cold I’ve been running in for the last 3 months.
I have no doubt that I want to run another marathon. In fact, I have dreams of speeding up in the next one and qualifying for Boston one day. A girl can dream, right?