Dallas Marathon cancelled, now what?


You’ve put in the months of arduous training. You were ready to perform. You’re working your way through the stages of grief because the event was cancelled. Now is the time to make some serious decisions of consequence regarding your running.

Let’s look at the two top scenarios:

A: Run an official marathon.

Get with your running coach and figure out the best training plan to maintain and re-taper for the race, don’t be tempted to do anything hard this weekend in these horrible conditions, it just won’t be worth the risk. If you do any running, plan on EZ pace and adjust to the conditions, an injury at this point will erase your efforts to date.

B: Just say screw it and go run a marathon.

There are a number of ad hoc “marathon” runs set up for tomorrow. None of them will give you a true marathon experience, nor will they likely be able to give you any sense of your marathon fitness level due to the conditions of the available routes. Current weather forecasts indicate that next weekend may provide safe conditions to run a marathon distance here in Dallas. If there aren’t other ad hoc opportunities with semi support, you can devise your own route and at least do the distance. If you want a realistic picture of your performance, run at least 26.5-26.7 miles according to your GPS watch, hardly anyone runs less than that distance in a sanctioned certified course.

Keep these in mind if you decide this is your path:

1)  You can’t duplicate the adrenaline of race day, the anticipation you feel at the start line or the exhilaration you feel along the way and at the finish line.

2)  Running a marathon is hard on your body and without medical support a race effort could be dangerous to your health.
 
I feel your pain, I had to regroup for a goal marathon set for Maine in May, couldn't go due to personal challenges, ran Irving marathon instead, missed BQ by 1:14... trained all summer / fall for my next opportunity which was Tulsa a few weeks ago. Running is constant moving target, no pun intended... we set goals, reset, regroup as necessary, the journey is as fulfilling as you make it.

Train smart, race smart – have a good run.

 Coach Steve

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