It seems like after a long training cycle, the next obvious question is “What’s Next?” (I mean, I signed up for my second marathon 24 hours after my first…). But now that Eugene has come and gone, I took a little time off, got back into a rhythm, and re-introduced my body to race distances shorter than 26.2 miles. Now, I once again am at that crossroads. What the heck do I do now?

Right now, I don’t really feel like racing. Maybe it’s the training, the stupid fees, the fear of failure, or the nerves that take me back to HS track when I wanted to vom at the starting line — I’m not entirely sure. I do want to run. And I want to get faster. I have goals and I one day want to crush them. But there’s time.  

And quite frankly, I’m a little burnt out. I couldn’t finish a 5x1000m workout the other week, and every time I wake up early to go for a run, I turn over in bed and sleep for another hour. The tipping point was the summer series 5K I ran on Wednesday – I knew I was exhausted, but it was National Running Day! And all my friends were going to be there! I decided to run it as a ‘fun run,’ but felt awful from the moment I took off. I almost DNF’d (…a 5K…) because I was a mental mess. I crossed the line in 22:22 (ok, that’s kind of cool) and wanted to, well, die.

So I’m focusing on healing. For awhile. These last few months have actually been kind of crazy-town for me: lots of changes and lots of things under the non-blog radar I’ve been dealing with, and the thought of training for a sub 1:35 half or 44xx 10K seems a little daunting. Namely, I want to enjoy my summer, be outside all the time with my friends and margaritas, and stop feeling so exhausted. (Side note: I’m being a total hypocrite because I kind of hate when people complain about being tired. Everyone is tired. I know. But ohhhh well).

So what’s next? I’m going to enjoy summer. I’m letting my body actually recover from hiking the AT. I’m going to go to IKEA with my new roommate and actually be an adult and buy a bed AND a couch. (Yikes.) I’m going to go to Florida to visit my Grandma, out to the North Fork to go wine-tasting, and Fire Island to hard chill on the beach. I’m going to my first friend’s wedding in Wisconsin, and will hopefully spend other summer evenings with my favorite people in the whole entire world.

I will, of course, still run. But I think I need to hide my garmin in storage for a while. Take a break from all the numbers. All the data. Think of it like a juice cleanse…for mile splits. Or something (: