What do loving, caring, selfless husbands do for their wives? They sign themselves up for a Spring marathon during a weekend in May. Not just any weekend, Mother's Day weekend. A Mother's Day weekend that also happens to coincide with your 12th wedding anniversary. You're welcome, Ashley. My gift to you is a 3 hour and 20 minute, overnight, road trip to South Dakota with the kids, so that I can run a marathon and you can find out what to do with three kids ranging from 7-11 years old in a completely foreign city; lucky girl.
I've run a whopping total of one marathon. Due to the ridiculously hot temps on the day of the Heartland Marathon in Omaha last fall, I unfortunately didn't get to race it; instead, I turned it into a training run and a learning experience.
My goal is to tackle two marathons per yea: one in the Spring, one in Autumn (calling it "Autumn" instead of "Fall" makes me feel fancy). I've been on the lookout for my Spring 2018 marathon. Personally, I didn't want to run Lincoln. It felt like the easy thing to do and I wanted to pick the race that felt right to me. Nothing that fell on a good weekend in Omaha, Lincoln, KC, Des Moines or anywhere else in the area. Then I stumbled across Brookings on May 12.
This gives me a full 10 weeks of dedicated marathon training. My off-season training was pretty solid. My long runs topped at 16 miles, and I feel as though I got in some really good base training. Going into week 1, I feel pretty damn good about my fitness. Coming off of a half marathon PR of 2+ minutes in October, a PR (albeit, my "adult" PR) in the 5k in January and some really encouraging tempo runs this winter, I'm going into this phase with some good confidence.
Now, look. I'm not expecting anything out of the ordinary to happen at this race, nor am I expecting to drop a Boston qualifier. If I did, well, I'd probably either cry or poop myself from excitement (or both), and that would be a testament to the work I've put in over the past four months. This is a relatively flat course (pro), with lots of turns (meh) throughout the entirety of Brookings (I love city running), so this will definitely be an adventure.
Plus, they serve burgers at the finish line. I don't care if a leg falls off mid-race. I'll crawl to the damn finish line for a burger.