This has been an interesting year, running wise. I started off the year marathon training for my big race of the year, the Maratona di Roma, after being off for almost 2 months attempted to start running straight after having been a Galloway runner for over 3 years. This year I struggled a bit to keep myself motivated to run and felt for a while like running was a job instead of my passion when I got so caught up with the numbers. Once I remembered why I was out there and why I love to run, it all fell back into place. In the end, the only person who cares about the times is me and I’ll get there, but I’ve decided that it will be at my own pace.
That being said, I had an extremely eventful year. Breaking it down…
16 individual races + 2 Ragnar Trail Relays & volunteered at the Rock n’ Roll AZ expo and marathon start line
1 – 5K (PR: 26:46)
3 – 10Ks including one trail (PR: 54:01 – my athlinks shows 51:25 but I’m not counting that since the course was .4 miles short)
1 – 15K (PR: 1:25:07)
1 – 10 miler (PR: 1:35:06)
1 – Sprint Duathlon New Event so it was an automatic PR (1:22:59)
6 – Half Marathons (PR: 1:57:29)
2 – Marathons (No new PR)
All of these races + training equated to 1,085 miles for the year & I still have one more run today. I finally hit another goal of 1,000 miles for the year!
I started the year with a three time goals, run sub 30 in an official 5K race, sub 2 in the half marathon and sub 4 in the marathon. I finished the year with PRs in all distances except the marathon.
Outside of going to Rome, I had decided at the beginning of the year that I was going to stay for the most part within driving distance for my races this year. One of my big 2014 goals, not related to running, was to make a huge dent in paying off my debt. I’m happy to say that I will be debt free within 2 months!! This goal made it so that I had to be a bit more conscious of my race selection.
Which means, of those 18 events that I did broke down as follows:
11 in the Phoenix area
2 in Las Vegas (New Race State for 2014)
3 in California (San Diego, San Francisco & Ventura)
1 in Zion, UT (New Race State for 2014)
1 in Rome, Italy (New Race Country for 2014)
The best part of my running year was all the amazing people that I met. I am incredibly blessed and so happy to have these amazing people in my life. Without social media, Instagram & Facebook especially, I would have never met the fellow runners that I am able to call my friends and in the end that means so much more than any medal, t-shirt or race. Thank you to all of you who have been following my adventures this year – I’m so happy to have you as a part of my life. I’m look forward to some amazing things in 2015!!
What was the best part of your 2014 running year?
