It’s been a week since finishing my first marathon. I’m waiting another week before I get back into the gym to kick my strength training up a few notches. Given how I felt after the marathon, it is even more obvious that I need to up my game when it comes to my core strength. So I’ve been doing a bit of research on the web and in my arsenal of training/fitness books. I’m thinking I’m going to go with “The New Rules of Lifting for Abs.” I started with NROL for Women ages ago, when I first started running, but ended up hiring a personal trainer to help me get stronger at the time. I have fallen out of the regular lifting routine, aside from the once a week sessions I did while at Lifetime. Now that I’m at Anytime, I need to get back into a strengthening phase. I just need to wait one more week for my new ink to heal up a bit more before wandering into the gym.

So in my researching, I started kicking around my running goals for next year. Obviously, training for the Des Moines Marathon or any fall marathon is a no go due to 2016 being an election year. Dang day job getting in the way of my training! I could always aim for summer marathon like Grandma’s in Duluth, MN. But I’m not sure if I’m quite ready to start another marathon training cycle in February.

I would definitely like to focus a bit more on some shorter distances. Mainly the half marathon as my PR for a half was achieved the first time I raced that distance. Granted, I had a stress fracture in my left foot five months after that half marathon and then had to rehab for another six months before I ran my next half marathon, a year after my first one. Well, that wasn’t pretty, I was under trained and slower. My next half marathon was six months after that one, with just as many hurdles as the previous one. A nagging injury in the ball of my right foot. I was better trained for Dam to Dam and had a faster time than the IMT Des Moines Half, but it was still a few minutes slower than my first half marathon. I’m hoping that my recent speediness at Capital Pursuit will continue with some hardcore strength training. I am now gunning to have a 2 hour half marathon finish time.