2013 was an interesting year for me. I ran less than I had the year before, by about 300 miles or so, yet still managed to run almost as much vertical and averaged significantly more vertical per mile than I ever have before. I ran my first Ultra, and subsequently wrote what I personally think is my best-ever race report about the experience. I lowered (again) my half marathon time, and still have never run one on roads. I added Parkour into my training regimen, which at times both helped and hindered my trail running.
November and December were tough months for me. I finished 9th in my age group in the USATF trail half marathon national championship at the beginning of November, and subsequently pretty much stopped recording my running for the rest of the year. There were two reasons for that. First, there was an incident in the Parkour gym where another athlete took me out in a bit of a douchebag move. That kept me off the trail for several weeks. Second, I was in the midst of a move across the country, and while I didn't run anywhere near as much as I would have liked, I feel I got plenty of exercise simply moving my stuff out to the POD, and then back in from the POD. I still ran some number of miles in there, but did not bother to record my workouts any further.
Looking ahead to 2014 now, a lot of things are changing.
The most obvious of these, of course, is that I'm in a new state. Or rather, I have moved back to my home state of Minnesota. There are some obvious and not as obvious results of this fact. First, it will undoubtedly be more difficult to run trails every day. Second, it will be difficult to get in as much vertical, and I will have to search hard for proper hills on which to do repeats (recommendations are accepted and indeed encouraged). However, and thirdly, since I now work from home, I have no commuting time to deal with. This means I have an extra 2 hours or so every day in which I might be able to fit in either more running or more sleep. And a side affect of numbers 1-3 is that I will hopefully be running more miles in 2014 than I did last year.
In the interest of a fresh start, and in acknowledgment of a new situation, I changed a few things around my blog as well. For some time, I have considered changing the name of my blog from the "Racing Through the Wilderness" and "Shamelessrunner" titles it has had the past decade or so. This year I finally decided to do so.
I have often adopted the "Falcon" moniker, primarily because that's where my last name originates. I went back and forth for a long time between "Running Falcon" and "Racing Falcon," but the image of a running falcon was too hilarious to cast aside. So Running Falcon it is. That is also my Twitter handle (@runningfalcon), though I have yet to tweet anything. So let this serve as the introduction to the new title of the blog: The Running Falcon. The address has also changed to runningfalcon.blogspot.com, which so far decreased the readership significantly, but I hope that will change soon.
Enough of all that: to the actual running. My main focus at the moment has just been getting some consistency back into my running again. That led to three days of short (20-30 minutes) runs in a row. This was followed by the realization that this is more road running than I normally do in two to three weeks. It is definitely taking some adjustment.
Of course, the -20 temperatures, with -50 windchills, that hit the area today have put a bit of a damper on my consistency. But with highs above 0 again tomorrow, I will be back out and running again, rested and ready to add time and distance on to my workouts.
And that's much needed, because I have ambitious hopes for this year. I recently became a member of the Upper Midwest Trail Runners and hope to participate in at least one of their series. I also continued my 13 Project, advancing it by one year and making it the 14 project. I added some new items, and took off some old ones, but one that stayed the same was the desire to do 14 races this year. I'f I'm going to do that, I need a) motivation and b) fitness. Since this is the Midwest, none of the races start until April, so I have a good 3 months to get some solid base miles in. As long as I don't get over-enthusiastic and mess it up (always a possibility), I should be good to go.
I hope to have one other piece of exciting news soon, but I am waiting for word.
So on that ambiguous note, I am off.
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