2013 Race Schedule: The Year of the Unknown

I am sure everyone has been waiting with baited breath for this one….so drumroll please.  The highly anticipated sort of 2013 Race Calendar:

1.     Surf City Half Marathon#18 - 2/3

2.     SF RNR Half Marathon#19 -4/7

3.     Wildflower Olympic Triathlon - 5/5

4.     Portland RNR Half Marathon #20– 5/19

5.     Beach to Mountains Marathon - 5/26

6.     SF Half Marathon #21 - 6/16

7.     Barbs Race Half Ironman – 7/27

8.     Cascade Lakes - 8/2-8/3

9.     Hood To Coast - 8/23-8/24 (pending selection)

10.  Pacific Grove Olympic Tri or Big Kahuna Half Ironman (pending not getting into HTC and completely losing my mind)

11.  Nike Women’s Half #22 - 10/13 (pending lottery selection)

12.  Ragnar Ultra Las Vegas 11/8-11/9 (pending this girl not getting into NYM)

 

I honestly have looked at this list and back to my calendar hundreds of times and as you can see the 2^nd half of the year is causing me some major Type-A stress.  Here’s the issue, I want to do a Sub-7 Half Ironman (see resolutions), I also want to do a Sub-4:30 Marathon and a bunch of other fun events.  Surprisingly trying to fit all of those in during 365 days is harder than expected.  Ideally I would spend half the year concentrating on running and the other half concentrating on triathlon right?  

Originally that was the plan and rationally I should spend the 1^st half on tri since I am already signed up for Wildflower Olympic (I can’t make this my half because there is no way I can do a sub-7 on this course) and will be tri training regardless.  I started researching some half irons in the first seven months of the year and came up short.  Vineman Half would have been perfect timing and is on my race bucket list but is sold out and so is the waiting list!  Barb’s Race is still open and might be a good option but it’s women only and MFR is into tri-training right now and would like to eventually do a half so I don’t want to derail that by saying, “sorry, no boys allowed but I am going to train without you.”

The other option and the race I really want to do is Big Kahuna in September.  When we first talked about moving to SF I thought, yes I can do Big Kahuna again and as a local!  I love this race and have wanted to participate ever since I first ran it in 2009 and it’s even better without an 11 hour drive to get there.  It’s such an awesome course and great timing usually; except for this year.  This year we have - not two - not three – but four weddings in August all in the Northwest.  Add CLR and HTC into the mix and we will not be home on a weekend for over a month.  Traveling makes getting those long bike rides in very difficult.  Packing running  shoes – no biggie.  Packing bikes – not happening! 

I am still holding out hope that we can get creative and work this out but that’s why it’s all still up in the air.  On top of question marks around Hood To Coast, Ragnar and Nike. So there you have it!  A super lengthy explanation of why the 2^nd half of my racing calendar is all in italics.  I am sure there will be multiple versions of this list and as much as it drives me crazy seeing all the “pending”  and not having a concrete half iron on the schedule,  I feel good about the first half of the year and we’ll just see where the cards fall for the 2^nd half.