It's not even March, but I know I'll be working hard come April

It's been four weeks since I started running with the Fleet Feet half marathon training group.

And I'll be the first to admit, deciding to pay the $50 and join the group? Best decision I've made so far this year. I was worried before it all started. I typically don't run with others. Running is kind of my quiet time. My time to think. But you know what? I look forward to early Saturday mornings and running with the others in the group. We're a pretty diverse bunch and haven't run out of things to talk about yet! And the miles seem to go so much quicker when I'm running them with others. Let's not forget the built in motivation.

Saturday we tackled 8 miles and remember how I mentioned I killed the run? I guess I wasn't kidding myself about feeling strong. I got an e-mail from the coach last night:

"You did phenomenal yesterday.  Surging up the hills , driving to the finish, you're really doing well, keep it up!"

Yeah, I'd say that's a little bit of a confidence booster.

Or maybe that was his way of softening the blow of what I was going to see next. See the training group is aiming for the Oshkosh Half Marathon in mid-April, but the coach was willing to tweak our training plans if we had different goal races. While I'm running the Oshkosh half, my goal race this spring is the Green Bay Half Marathon. I want to kill my old PR and finally hit that 2:30 I've been chasing the last year.

So my coach was going to tweak my plan and chart out what the four weeks between Oshkosh and Green Bay would look like training-wise. Now I had heard the coach mention once or twice before that ideally he'd like to have his runners run longer than the race distance prior to race day.

I guess I shouldn't have been surprised when I opened the training plan and saw the two weeks after Oshkosh? I'm supposed to do 15-mile runs.

Gulp.

I admit I'm a bit freaked out and it isn't even March yet. But still, 15 miles? That will be the longest I've ever run. And two weeks in a row? Oh boy.

But then I stop, think and remember J.J Watt's philosophy that I've adopted: Dream Big. Work Hard. And that's exactly what I'll be doing when the end of April arrives, because I've got some big dreams, but I know I'll have to do a lot of hard work to achieve them.

#DBWH