5 Years & Counting: So, What's Next?

I looked at Facebook this morning, and the On This Day feature gave me a friendly reminder that today was the fifth year anniversary of my decision to get out of bed before work, go out to the park, and not come back before jogging around the reservoir twice. 

After many stops along the way, I returned home exhausted, but excited to get to the point where I could do it without stopping, and immediately started doing this a few days a week. It's a miracle that I didn't get injured right away and swear off running for life.  

I lost my mileage spreadsheet a while back, and had stopped updating it regularly, but after a bit of snooping through old files here are my stats:

Total Miles Run: 6,900.96 
          Projected to hit 7,000+ by the end of 2015
Number of Races
           50 NYRR Races - including the 2013 & 2015 NYC Marathon
           10 NYCRuns Races - including one 2nd place age group award
             7 Other Races

Personal Records / McMillan Potential
1 Mile: 6:43 / 6:31 
5K: 23:44 / 22:37

4 Mile: 30:55 / 29:24
10K: 50:45 / 46:59
15K: 1:19:54 / 1:12:48
10 Mile: 1:22:32 / 1:18:32
Half: 1:44:45 / 1:44:45
Full: 3:51:05 / 3:40:27

Thank Yous!

Before I get into my future goals, I'd like to thank the following people. While everyone in my life has been super supportive, there were a few people that went above and beyond to help me get where I am today:

- My favorite running partner - my mother - who came out in the cold, windy rain to run 5 of my last 20 mile run with me
- Leiba - for being great company on long runs and on our quest to see which ice cream is most worthy of our long run efforts
- Rachel - for being my soundboard and running guru - we didn't run together as much as I'd like but there's more time for that next year!
- Paul - my wonderful boyfriend - for being so understanding and supportive during the whole marathon training process
- The rest of my family and friends for putting up with the craziness :-)  

New Goals

Since I had been chasing the sub-4 marathon dream for years, I now need a new long term goal to chase after, but what? After a week off of running to recuperate from the marathon and consider my next steps, I am ready to get back out there and set new goals for myself. 

Short Term

Achieve McMillan potential in some of the other distances over the next year. Of course, once this happens, all of the numbers may realign, but that's part of the fun. A Sub-30 4 mile has a nice ring to it!

Long Term / Long Shot
 
Win another age group award - but this is not as likely to happen as the NYC running scene is especially competitive. The one time I did win was partially because it wasn't a large field, and all of the faster people competed in the longer distance.

Bring my half-marathon time down to a point where I MIGHT have a shot at qualifying for Boston. Per McMillan calculator, I would have to go no slower than a 1:42:09, but that assumes perfect training. In reality I would probably need to go even faster than that and get around a 1:40. I would need to drop my marathon time by 37 seconds per mile, which is no easy task. 

I told myself that 2015 NYCM would be my last marathon but there is a good chance that I will probably run one again in the future. 

It's been a great five years so far, and I look forward to seeing what I am capable of doing in the future!