Results are posted!

Written by Steve Jackson

Over the last month over 40 Highland City Striders have run numerous marathons and half-marathons that they focused their training on since the first of the year. Many of them achieved their goals, they ran PR’s, they completed distances they had never done before, they experienced the high of accomplishment. At the same time many might have missed their goal, maybe by only a few seconds or maybe by a more significant margin, they suffered a feeling of defeat.

SO NOW WHAT?

All should take some time to recover, a day or two off then some easy runs after the effort. A simple rule of thumb is 7-10 days for a half marathon and 10-14 days for a full marathon. Regardless of achieving your goal or not, you can maintain your level of fitness to race at a high level for a couple of weeks. Racing a 5k or two over the next month or trying another half marathon within a couple of weeks could give you a chance to improve on your recent accomplishment and/or try for that goal you might have just missed.

FOR THOSE WHO ACHIEVED, A COUPLE OF THINGS TO CONSIDER:

· PR’s can be addictive, don’t ignore the need to take a little recovery and race again too soon

· Capture your thoughts on the things that went positive for you in the race and training

· Capture your thoughts on what you think would help to improve

· Think about what you would like to accomplish next

FOR THOSE WHO MISSED THE GOAL, A COUPLE OF THINGS TO CONSIDER:

· Allow yourself to be disappointed, then move on. The quicker you move on the quicker you WILL achieve your goal

· Capture your thoughts on the things that went positive for you in the race and training

· Capture your thoughts on where you think you could improve

· Acknowledge that you are fitter than you were in the past and are capable of much better results

· Realize that sometimes races don’t go the way we want for things completely out of our control. These things could be weather, a meal that didn’t quite agree with you, outside stresses of work, family, etc.

LASTLY FOR ALL:

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