Adapting my 40 by 40 Plans

River (in orange shirt) being fearless again while climbing on the play structure

I had planned on running an 8k this past Saturday, but I forgot to register for it. By the time I remembered, the lung crud had settled in and I decided rest and recuperation were the better choice. I hated missing out on a potential race day, especially with the coming changes in our schedules, but since I'm planning on running a half marathon at the end of the month and am already undertrained, I need to be in as good a health as possible.

So what are those schedule changes?

Mr M's work schedule will be changing drastically and he'll be doing a lot of traveling, which will seriously cramp my ability to hare off to races early Saturday mornings. I can still do it, I'll just have to arrange childcare, which is not something I'm in the habit of doing. It's hard to trust others with my kiddos, even when I know I need the break. Plus there's the added expensive of said childcare.

Thankfully, the change in Mr M's work schedule is temporary and should go back to normal in about a year. In the meantime, the timing is a bit inconvenient since I'm not quite half way through my 40 by 40 goal.

Needless to say, it's a good thing I've been doing as many races as I have lately, as I now have some breathing room in my schedule. I've completed 18 races in the last 9 months, which leaves 22 races to complete in the next 15 months.

I'm still going to finish my 40 by 40 goal, but the variety of races will now be scaled back a bit. I'd already been considering scaling back just for the sake of our budget, so it makes it a bit easier to accept the changes. I won't be running a marathon, a bi or triathlon, or an out of state or international race. I'll be sticking to local, mostly shorter races. Depending on the rules of the race, one of the following will happen:

1. I'll walk while pushing the boys in Phil with Sunshine beside me. If I could convince her to run more, we could run a bit, but she still doesn't love running. 
2. I'll arrange a playdate for Sunshine while I run with the boys in the stroller. 
3. I'll get a babysitter to watch all three kiddos while I run by myself.

I'm disappointed about not being able to run the wider variety of races, but that's really just the overachiever in me. The realist in me is getting much better at changing plans and going with the flow when needed. And even after my goal is accomplished I plan on registering for a variety of races, so I can still do some of the ones I had hoped to do for my 40 by 40 goal. I won't be doing so many races in such a short period of time, though :)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

While I didn't run a race on Saturday, I was able to work out four times last week. Three treadmill walks plus one hike with the stroller for a total of 10.33 miles. That's significantly more miles than I've been doing in a week lately, and while it was a bit tiring, it felt good. It felt good to be tired from exertion rather than tired from being ill. Such a nice change of pace.