I can’t quite seem to get 2025 dialed in. Normally, I’m locked on a schedule 12 months out. My 2025 calendar though has gone through yet another revision.
I had been planning to run TWOT 100M in February. It wasn’t until after I had committed back in August that I realized it conflicted with DUC 100K, which I was hoping to volunteer at again. But I had signed up for the race so was still planning to run it. It wasn’t until the later miles of Devil Dog that I had a change of heart. Now late in races is not a good time to make decisions on future events as you’re normally not in a good mental place to make objective choices, however I think this is a good one for three reasons.
- I could use a solid training block heading into a packed 2025 calendar.
- I really want to volunteer at DUC.
- Winter races suck.
Whether true or not, I felt like my performance at DD100M this year was held back by a lack of dedicated training. I don’t think my pace was really all that much slower than races from earlier in the year, but my fitness was definitely not better. TWOT is a really, really hard race and while I could probably finish it off my current level of fitness, it probably wouldn’t be an awesome experience. And two months between races wouldn’t really provide me an opportunity to level up my fitness. I would be more treading water. I pretty much have a race a month from March-September so next fall would be my next chance for a training block.
I don’t need a dedicated training block to have fun and achieve my goals (i.e. finish races feeling decent). The important thing right now though is that I want a nice long training block. I want to ramp up the miles a bit. Do some more doubles. Maybe finally getting around to making strength training a habit. So TWOT needs to come off the schedule.
Speaking of wants. I really want to head down and support the DUC 100K. This is such an amazing race format that it’s important to me to do what little I can to keep it going so others can torture themselves experience this amazing race.
I also don’t want to run another winter race this year. While I’ve got my gear dialed in to deal with the weather, frankly I just don’t want to deal with it. So I won’t.
At the end of the day, this was an easy decision for me to make. Now I just need to figure out what I want to do late next year. . .