I put in 13 near-perfect weeks of training and there are still 7 weeks to go until the Mountains 2 Beach Marathon. So why did I decide to defer my race entry?

More Recovery Time

For starters, I’m injured. I haven’t run for the past two weeks and it looks like I’ll be going on a third week of no running. My ankle-area started hurting two weeks back and I won’t justify running through this pain. The first several days were tough – I wanted to run and sometimes I would even try, but then the pain would come and I would find myself walking home. My PT suggested giving myself another week to rest it before even thinking about deferring my race. That made my second week a little easier, without the pressure to run. I even enjoyed my cross-training workouts in the pool and the gym. Now I’ve made it to the third week and I feel really good about my decision to skip this race.

Who Knows Me Best

I am truly grateful that so many people have reached out during the last couple of weeks but one of the hardest parts has been having to explain myself, explain my reasons for deferring and having to listen and accept unsolicited advice. At the end of the day, I know myself best. I’ve been here numerous times before – injured and making the decision on whether or not I can realistically run the race that I want to (which takes me to my next point).

Goal Digger

The brutal truth is my goal this year wasn’t to run races for fun. I want to train hard, race hard and challenge myself to accomplish bigger goals. Even though my momentum has been strong in the past 6 months with new PRs and different challenges, I felt like I needed to sit this one out and that is all just a part of the journey.

On To The Next One

People always say, ‘there’s always next time’. And in my case, there is literally always the next one. While I would have loved to run Mountains 2 Beach, the Chicago Marathon was always my larger focus of 2019. And it looks like I will have a lot of work to do before October!