Prepping / Planning next year's races

On Sunday (only 1 week after Little Rock Marathon), I just started my new training cycle, which works out perfectly timed for the Shamrock Marathon in March in Virginia Beach (at which I will attempt - again - to break 3 hours). Copying my last ful training cycle, my first two days were purposely difficult: 10k time trial (in under 40 minutes) and 5k time trial (in under 20 minutes). The 10k trial kicked my ass -- that's HARD at that pace for that length of time. I did it, but dang, was it brutal. The 5k was MUCH easier in comparison; not easy, but not overly difficult. 

Definitely looking forward to another full training cycle. That said, though, there will be several times where I deviate from the plan because of two marathons I will be running before then: one in early January (which I won't be doing for time), the other in mid-February (at which I will try to break 3 hours given the almost completely downhill course, which result will count for the Abbott Age Championships). 

As of now, I have 5 marathons set up for the spring schedule: January, February, March, and two (in 6 days) in April. Beyond those, I'm considering one in May and one in June, but will make a decision closer in time, once I have my result for my February and March races. Beyond MCM in October (which I will certainly run), I have no idea what my fall schedule looks like yet. Part of it depends on whether I can reliably travel to a couple of overseas locations to run and not worry about the protocol for returning to the US. We'll see. Heck, given the couple of other races that I'm looking at in October and November, I'd be able to do all of them. No decisions any time soon.