Welcome to my redesigned running blog. It seemed appropriate to spruce it up a bit to accompany my renewed training and racing ambitions, now that tenure stress is behind me. After more than half a year of lackluster training and frankly erratic training for years before that, I've decided to fire my old coach (me). I'd always enjoyed coaching myself, so to speak. Figuring out what sorts of training work best for me, learning how to respond to set-backs, setting appropriate goals for myself, and trying to motivate myself to achieve them have always been more than half the fun of running for me. I've never been under any illusion that I'm particularly good at those things, but I enjoy them and couldn't imagine just mindlessly doing workouts, which is what I used to think training under a coach would involve. More recently, however, I've met several people who train with coaches, and I've checked out some blogs by runners much faster than me who have coaches. None of those people mindlessly does workouts. All of them are at least as invested as I have been in those elements of training that I used to think were unique to being self-coached, but they also have additional and often very valuable support, guidance, and inspiration from their coaches. So I have realized for some time that a coach could help me become better at all the things I enjoy about running, including becoming faster and more competitive - if, that is, I found the right coach for me. After running Grandma's a few weeks ago, I was again tossing around the idea of getting a coach when Ryan Vail, who is currently one of the best marathoners in the US, posted on his blog that he is launching a personal coaching business, Prevail coaching. Long story short: Ryan, along with Mike Kilburg, is now coaching me toward my fall marathon goal. So far, after I recovered from Grandma's, we've gradually started to increase mileage with some light fartleks, strides, and hills. I will begin posting my weekly training 16 weeks from my goal race, which is the week after next. Since I will be spending the fall 2014 semester in Rome, Italy, I've chosen the Turin Marathon as my goal race. I'll try to post not just about the details of my training but also more generally about my experiences running in Italy. I might even manage to post some photos, but we'll see about that.
