Hi all!  I know I’ve been out of it for the past several weeks on this blog, but I’ve been moving to Boulder, starting a new job, buying a house, doing all kinds of home improvement and decorating activities, etc. etc.  I haven’t been running a ton, but I did do the classic Boulder Skyline Traverse a few weekends ago (mostly hiking, admittedly!), swept a portion of the Never Summer 100K, and have done some cool hiking in the Indian Peaks Wilderness.  Photos and other updates available on Instagram.  Now that I’m fairly settled in Boulder, I’m finally getting focused back on races!  MOST IMPORTANTLY…

BOSTON!  This morning I was able to submit my application to run the 2018 Boston Marathon!!!!!  Regular readers will recall that I qualified for Boston at the 2017 Phoenix Marathon, after a many-year journey to BQ.  Boston has a rolling application process where runners who run faster qualifying times register earlier than others.  So registration started several days ago for the fastest runners, and today registration opened for runners who, like me, finished at least 5 minutes faster than the cutoff time for their age group.  (My cutoff time is 3:35, and I ran a 3:28:56 at Phoenix.)   Next, the BAA will confirm my qualifying time with the Phoenix folks and will process the faster runners’ entries to ensure that spots remain for runners with my qualifying time.  (Last year, entrants needed to run 2:09 faster than their cutoff time for their age group, so I should be OK but you never know!)  God willing, I will receive my acceptance within 5 weeks!   And then… THE JACKET (said somewhat snarkily but also dead seriously).

Boston isn’t until April.  So what am I going to do until then?  Well, my husband and I have talked about visiting Austin, Texas for several years now, so I decided to register for the 2018 Austin Marathon in February!  I don’t know a ton about the race, but this is an example where the decision was really driven by travel preferences vs. seeking out a specific race.  More to come on my (winter!) training for this race!

One last update:  before my BQ race earlier this year, I completed a 12-week cut through the Renaissance Periodization program.  I have several posts on this, but my main recap is here.  I really felt good on RP, but after Phoenix, I took a break from running and from my diet.  And then there was the whole are-we-moving-or-what-am-I-doing-with-my-life phase, and then the oh-we-are-moving-this-is-a-lot-to-think-about phase, followed by I-drove-across-the-country-and-now-I-live-in-a-basement-apartment-and-don’t-have-a-kitchen phase, and most recently the home-ownership-is-a-lot-of-work phase.  In short, I am basically back where I started before RP, weight-wise (but not really in any other way).  But I finally have pots, pans, TWO refrigerators, and zero houseguests, and I’m ready to get back to RP!  I’ll be doing 12 weeks of RP using the same templates I used last round.  The only differences are that this time I am older, wiser, not paying for the coach, and hopeful that after my cut, I will be able to go on maintenance (and keep the lbs off) vs going into diet freefall.  We shall see — I’ll keep you posted!

Anyone else waiting for their Boston Marathon confirmation email?  Do you know how long it usually takes — 5 weeks or something less?  Oh, and what are the shirt sizes like?  I had mucho anxiety about picking women’s small vs. women’s medium but then I figured fitting into the small is a little extra RP motivation #amiright?And who has run Austin before or is running it in 2018?!  Give me alllll the tips!