Breaking Bob

A rare non-race post. There is not a USATF-NE GP race until June, but I will be racing again soon. I wanted to get my ass in shape and run well at Ribfest, but the harder I tried, the less motivated I have gotten. I came to the realization that I am just not having fun with it. I am forcing runs and feel like hell most of the time. I am achy and beat up. So, I decided to stop focusing on getting in shape. I am just going to go out and do whatever feels good on any given day. I am going to race just for the sake of doing a race and not care how piss poor I do…and let me tell you, it will be bad!

So, what does “have fun” mean? I guess whatever. For now, I am going to try to get back on the trails more. Try to do some races I have never done and re-visit some that I have not done in years.

So, first up is the VCM Relay. I was fortunate enough to get an entry through my involvement with Hoka One One New England. I will be running the 2-person team. I have run the VCM Relay like a million times with the Turtles, but not since 2009. We had many memorable and can’t remember trips to Burlington. I have run the 5-Person team with 5, 4 and 3 members. I have also run the 2-person team alone the day after running the Wachusett Mountain Race. (My teammate was injured).

The next race after that will be the Cranmore Mountain Race. The last and only time I ran this race was also 2009! That was a rough race. It was my first real mountain race and I sucked! I don’t climb that well, I am heavy and that doesn’t help my climbing. This year’s course has some pretty solid downhill and I think I can do well on that section…the rest; well the rest will be a lot of suffering. But…FUN right?! Haha. I am looking forward to it.

So since I decided to start doing more trail race and uphill racing I thought I should start getting back on the trails. I ran a very rainy easy short trail run on Saturday, it was more like a river run…but it was a ton of fun. Last night I headed over to Lincoln Woods with my goal to get in a good amount of uphill running and to do a fartlek of sort and basically stumble around the trails making myself suffer.

Well, mission accomplished. I was sucking wind on the long and steep ups. I was hammering the downhills and I had no clue where the hell I was going. I went around the baseball field in the park which along the fence was saturated with mud and water, I just barreled ass through it…the moms and dads gave me some interesting looks!

So with my new found sense of enjoying running…again…maybe I will actually get in shape…maybe.

Speaking of trails and whatnot.  I starting this NE MUT Blog...and there is a Facebook Page as well.  Basically a round up of anything I see about NE MUT running.  If you have anything interesting to share...please do.