take me to the races

**First of all, I really want to sincerely thank everyone for their support and encouragement following my last post.  It really means so much to me and has given me extra motivation to keep training and believing.  Thank you from the bottom of my heart.**

As I've said in a couple of my previous posts, my love for racing has grown tremendously this year.  I'm not sure what took me so long to catch the bug, but I'm glad I finally caught it.  I've been a competitive person my whole life.  I competed for 13 years in gymnastics, played softball throughout middle school and high school, played soccer, and even swam for a couple of summers.  I am a competitive person by nature wether it be in a sporting event, or a yard game while enjoying some cold beverages.  For some reason though, when I began running a few years ago, I never fully embraced the competitive aspect.  I enjoyed running a marathon, and a few half marathons, but that was about it.  I never ran races to prove anything.  I ran them just to run them.

Enter 2013.  I caught the bug.  Completely and totally 100%.  I love running races.  So far this year I have completed 4: the Merrimack Sparkler 5K , the Nashua Soup Kitchen 10K, Boston's Run to Remember Half Marathon, and the Jamestown Half Marathon.  I learned so much about what I am capable of (and not) from each one.  There were many ups and downs, but I left each one wanting more.  As of right now I have 4 more on the schedule for this year, but I have a feeling more will be added.

Thursday, August 8th, I am running my second 5K in Manchester, NH.  I'm not sure yet how I feel about the 5K.  I think I like it, but that opinion is based on only one 5K.  I finished the one I ran this year thinking I could run faster than 23:58.  On Thursday, my goal is a new PR.

August 18th I am going to test out my trail legs.  I am running my first trail race in Nashua, NH.  It's a 10 mile race on a trail I have casually run on a few times.  I am super excited to give this one a try.  My goal for this race is to make it to the finish without falling on my face, or in the water, multiple times.  Pretty high expectations, I think. 

September 8th I am running another half marathon in North Hampton, NH.  This will be my third half marathon of the year to bring the grand total to 8.  My most recent half last month was a bit of a disaster.  My goal is to not go out too fast, so I don't crash and burn at the end.

On October 13th I am running my second marathon in Newport, RI.  I am both nervous and extremely excited about this.  For a while I said I probably wouldn't run another full marathon.  When I ran the first one it was shortly after I began running and it was brutal.  It took a long time to forget the pain, and I happily settled on running half marathons.  I always said the half distance was enough to be a challenge, but not enough to kill you.  Well, I am now ready for the killer challenge again.  Ultimately my big goal is to BQ.  However, I think that might be a little ambitious for this year, which means I will be running more marathons in the future.  My goal for this marathon is to break 4 hrs.  Based on my training so far, I believe I can do it.    

So, that's what my race calendar looks like as of now for the rest of the year.  I'm looking forward to running each race, and seeing what happens!   

What races are on your schedule?