Time for the annual blog post

Another year closes and I still don't have my act together on this blog thing.

So this year I aimed to run a half marathon a month, ended up successful. made up one in June when i couldn't afford race fees. last one being the Laughlin Bullhead City half marathon. It was a dam good race.

 So, here is the race in picture  form. wind not pictured. wind sucked. big time. 

 lap around the high school track

 

 Damn fine dam we got to run over

 Heading back along the Colorado river

And then my phone died so I couldn't take more pics. it was a great run. the wind made it awful, but that just makes it more of an accomplishment to finish. 

Overall, a good running year. next year is my first full! eep! 

Making decisions

So, new year, resolutions, blah blah blah. Aka the things we think we should do to improve ourselves, but never actually do. Kinda like this blog so far, bwahahah.

But today I made a decision. A big one, for me. I decided to run a marathon. It's not like I'm still super fat and unhealthy. Finishing half marathons has become part of my identity. #irunforbling #vacationraces and now that I run half marathons, I don't take them seriously anymore. They don't scare me.

Marathons, however, are still crazy for me. I've never finished a half and thought, "oh yeah, I can do this again, no problem!" Mostly I'm just happy to be alive. I've run half marathons where people died before me on the course. (It was my first half. I'm sad he died but thankful I didn't know about it until after I finished, as I was struggling and that might've discouraged me just enough to quit.) Last year I had to pause before the finish to allow a medic to motorcycle in to help a full marathoner that collapsed (he lived, fortunately). My internal identity is still very much a sedentary fat chick, so I honestly worry about dying. But I've been toying with the idea for awhile now, and today I pulled the trigger.

I am going to run the Pittsburgh Marathon in 2017. Not this year, next year. I was trying to decide if I wanted to fly back to pgh for the half again in 2016. My new running group is doing the SLO half which is the same weekend, so it was a question of which half to do. The price increase for pgh forced my hand, and so this is my compromise. I will run the pgh full in 2017. Running a full scares me; it's still crazy in my head. So I'm posting it here for accountability. 

The real reason I'm going to try and run a full is because of my coach, Gene. He offered to coach me for the full in 2017. So with his help, and the help of my running friends, I'm going to do this.

If you came upon this page and want to help support me, that'd be awesome! If not, you can hate read and hope I fail. I thrive on proving people wrong so that works for me too. Anything to get page views, right? 

Oh yeah, next steps. How to monetize this. Jekka needs running gear and pet-friendly hotels to sponsor her travels, hehehehe!