Races in March and April can be tricky weather-wise, I’ve had some where it has been freezing, snowing, raining, and warm. Basically, like a typical New York spring the weather can change on a daily basis. Thankfully, the weather for yesterday’s Scotland 10k was perhaps the best I can recall for this race. This first time I ran this in 2009 it was a steady downpour and some evil person stole the plastic bag I had my backpack covered in and my dry clothes became soaked. I’m not bitter about that at all.

Yesterday, also turned out to be the best 10k I have ran since 2009. I was three and half minutes off of my PR but still to see the early results I am having this year is making me a little excited. 2009 was a great year where I saw huge PRs in almost every single distance. Since then I have been mostly getting slower and not too thrilled about that.

But during last year’s marathon training I refocused and re-tooled my training and since then I have seen steady improvements. While it would be nice to hit some amazing PRs again, I will be happy just to see steady improvement throughout the year. I have two goals in the PR department and that is for both the half-marathon and marathon distances. I haven’t targeted on particular half-marathon to achieve that goal but I have four coming up this summer and I think I’m going to keep it loose in shooting for that PR. The idea is to push myself but not necessarily get so focused that I’ll be disappointed if I don’t get that PR. This is mainly because three of these half marathons will be taking place during marathon training and I want to try and maintain a positive outlook throughout that process.

While training for last year’s marathon I got excited about it in early August and was really happy with just about all of my long runs. I really think this is what helped me get that 11 minute PR last year. This year I’m hoping for a 19 minute PR but I know I’ll be happy with just a one second PR. I am convinced that maintaining that positive outlook will help in that regard.

I had some decent running in yesterday’s race and felt really good the entire way. I pushed myself in certain spots and had a strong finish. I also had that feeling of if I had to run another mile I could have and that is how I always like to finish a race.

Now it’s time to go log some more miles.