2014 started out pretty miserable for me. I was living in a town where I didn't know anyone and mostly spent the winter at home depressed. I rarely saw my husband as he was working a lot of hours and I wasn't very good at telling him what I needed from him when he was home. Instead I was hateful and angry all the time. The only good thing I had going on was running. I don't know if it was late 2013 or early 2014 that I decided to run FR101K, but I know I started training for it at the beginning of the year. At the time, that was the biggest thing I had planned to accomplish for the year. I planned to run that race, then just maintain that level of training and run my first 100 miler in 2015. Somewhere along the way that changed. My training for FR went really well. I felt really strong going in. Some things happened not long before the race that really shook my confidence, but I powered on. I went into that race knowing that people were betting against me. Literally. It's pretty upsetting to know that there are people out there hoping you'll fail. I didn't though. It just convinced me to push harder and do better. I finished the race and couldn't be more proud of how well I did. I obviously wish I wouldn't have had so many stomach issues, but I finished, so it doesn't really matter.
Shortly after FR I started thinking about what I wanted to do next. I knew I wanted to run 100 miles. For various reasons, the 100 I planned to run in 2015 was no longer an option. I also knew that I could do it sooner than I had originally thought I could. After searching and discussing it with Rick, I settled on Pumpkin Holler and that became my focus. About that time, things had pretty much reached a crisis point with my emotional health. I finally broke down one day and told Rick how unhappy I was. For the record, my unhappiness wasn't his fault. He just needed to know. We committed to spend more time together and work harder on our marriage. We've never before had to work so hard to schedule time together. We didn't know when he took his new job how hard it was going to be. I won't pretend it's easy now, but now we make spending time together a priority and have figured out that sometimes just spending 15 minutes alone together can mean a lot. I also finally started meeting people here and making friends and that helped tremendously. Let me tell you, Eureka Kansas is not an easy town to move to!
Right about the time Rick and I realized we need to spend more time together, my training ramped up. I needed to spend a lot more time running if I was going to be able to run 100 miles. Thankfully Rick started running too, so we spent quite a bit of time together this summer exercising. We were able to kill two birds with one stone. I won't lie and say it wasn't a little selfish of me to spend so much time running. It was. My family had to sacrifice a lot. It was pretty selfish of me to tell my husband that I'm upset because I never see him anymore, and then say "oh, hey, I'm going to be running half the day every Saturday and Sunday." He's a pretty amazing guy though and handled it well. I'm pretty lucky to have him!
I survived the training and my family survived it. My marriage survived. I ran 100 miles and rocked it. After that I started focusing on strength and haven't been running quite as much. I want to continue with strength training in 2015 as it seems to be helping my running, plus it's just pretty fun.
I don't really have any goals for 2015 except to keep lifting. I want to run another 100 miler. In fact, I have one picked out. I just have to convince Rick to let me do it! It will involve travel, a lot of money, time, time off work, and did I mention money? These races are expensive! If I can't convince him to let me do the one I want, I'll try to find one a little closer to home.
Total miles for 2014: 1764.24 (up from 1054 last year!)
I had such a huge year. Two new distance PR's and my mileage increased by a huge amount. I'll likely never have another year like this one. Maybe now I'll get faster? Ha! Well, I did have a half marathon PR and a 50K PR, so who knows?
My year in numbers:
Time Period
|
Count
|
Distance
|
Time
|
Avg Speed
|
Calories
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Summary | 260 | 1,764.24 | 358:13:33 | 4.2 | 130,058 |
| Jan 2014 | 18 | 137.13 | 32:14:37 | 4.2 | 13,197 |
| Feb 2014 | 18 | 119.02 | 24:23:57 | 4.9 | 4,151 |
| Mar 2014 | 18 | 105.00 | 23:11:10 | 4.5 | 9,721 |
| Apr 2014 | 17 | 200.06 | 41:27:39 | 3.5 | 8,313 |
| May 2014 | 13 | 65.15 | 12:36:16 | 4.8 | 6,414 |
| Jun 2014 | 20 | 94.94 | 15:05:24 | 4.6 | 7,304 |
| Jul 2014 | 34 | 198.84 | 41:41:08 | 4.4 | 18,280 |
| Aug 2014 | 31 | 236.30 | 48:44:01 | 4.2 | 19,124 |
| Sep 2014 | 23 | 190.51 | 35:01:32 | 4.0 | 13,230 |
| Oct 2014 | 14 | 170.60 | 40:52:37 | 3.7 | 9,149 |
| Nov 2014 | 24 | 118.49 | 17:09:18 | 5.0 | 8,608 |
| Dec 2014 | 30 | 128.20 | 25:45:54 | 4.5 | 12,568 |
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