This past week was Week 3 of the LMJS Marathon Training. The Half-Marathon Training Program doesn't officially start until the new year, but participants have been invited to do a shorter long-run with the marathon runners. The weather's been pretty awful, but thankfully it was decent on Saturday morning when I ran the 4.5 miles with the group. (It poured the rest of the day, and we drove up to Sacramento to see Kin's little brother and sister-in-law; the former ran CIM yesterday, with a BQ time. He's one of my running inspirations, for sure.)

My long runs are now about 6 miles, so I ran a longer run on Wednesday. That's the thing with training plans — you have to see them as guidance rather than scripture. If you're hurt, if you're sick, if your schedule has to change, the training plan should change to suit you. You shouldn't have to restructure everything to fit your life into some one-size-fits all training plan, particularly since that "one size" is often the imagined lifestyle of a young man with lots of free time and few family, domestic, or work responsibilities.

I made a couple of big decisions related to my training this week: firstly, I decided that I'll run the half marathon at the Oakland Running Festival. This is the event that the LMJS group is training for. I'd signed up to run a 10K at it, as my target race is six weeks later: the Bay Bridge Half. Now I'm going to do both. I think I'll be okay — knock wood — if I can stay injury-free and recover well from the first half to pick back up the training to complete the second one, six weeks later. Running the half marathon at ORF means I'll be able to train alongside the LMJS folks; and funnily enough I'm finding the group runs to be so much more enjoyable than the solo ones. The time just flies when you're running and chatting with other people. (This week I started to run on my own, listening to audiobooks rather than music. I need to slow down, and I find that music makes me go too fast. I suppose I could put slower songs on my playlist. Instead, I'm listening to a book.)

Secondly, I've decided to sign up for some classes on how to be a coach/trainer. This week I completed my First Aid certification. I plan on taking the CPR exam today. I'll start the personal trainer coursework today or tomorrow. I'd like to do some nutritional coaching coursework too. I think — lots of "I think's" in this blog post — I can dovetail the coursework with some of the ideas I'm thinking about for my next writing project: something about grief, trauma, aging, bodies, and technology. But I'm looking for something "next" that isn't solely writing, that has more of a practical, applied side to it. Part of me thinks I'll be an absolutely shitty coach: I am so opinionated. Yikes. So maybe I should stick with the writing.

Anyway. Plans. They can change. They should change.