Making Plans For a New Season

It’s helpful for me to look back when looking forward…this week a year ago, I was finishing up a nearly-18-hour training week, my last big one before the taper to IM AZ began. The body and mind just adjust to those volumes as normal. And adjust right back the next year, as I can’t quite imagine squeezing all of that into my life at the moment.

Beginning to train again for a new year is in some ways the most exciting part of the experience – full of hopes and dreams about races yet to come! I have played around with this schedule for several months now, mostly trying to find some things to keep me entertained over the winter, work on my weaknesses once racing season starts, and build in the best way possible to my biggest goal of the year. I appreciate all the help my coach gave me in tweaking the schedule for the best chances of success.

• Silicon Valley Turkey Trot 5K, Nov 25 – Come Thanksgiving morning, I’ll be lining up with half of my extended family and a cast of thousands for our local turkey trot. This will be my back-to-training run test, so it’s bound to hurt a bit.
• Jingle Bell Run 5K, Dec 18 – I miss winter running races and especially small local ones, so why not?
• Tritonman Sprint Triathlon, Feb 20 or maybe the Stanford Treeathlon, late Feb – 1st tri of the year!
• World's Shortest Triathlon, mid April – The distances are impossible to resist.
• Catfish 1-mile OW swim, late April – Time to work on the open water swimming.
• Tempe International Triathlon, May 15 – Hello, Tempe Town Lake, we meet again, see you in 6 months.
• Splash & Dash, June 2 – 1500m swim, 5k run.
• Silicon Valley 1/2 IM, June 12 – Though *still* not formally announced on the race website, we are told it will happen. This race falls in the category of “too local to pass up” i.e. the start line is within running distance of my house.
• Splash & Dash, July 7 – see above.
• Catfish 2-mile OW swim, late July – see above.
• Santa Cruz International Triathlon, Aug 7 – Now that I’m no longer scared of ocean races…
• Big Kahuna Triathlon, Sep 11 – Once upon a time, when I was just a runner, I said “Someday maybe I will do a triathlon and maybe even a 1/2 IM and I’ll do Big Kahuna.” Well gee, I guess I should finally do this one!
• Catfish 2-mile OW swim, mid September – see above.
• Lighthouse Century, Sep 24 – Going back for the 100 mile distance since we loved the 100k so much this year.
• And finally, there’s THIS, Nov 20 – Oh YES, again!

I suppose I’d better stock up on Recovery Socks and bags of ice now…