A couple of weeks ago, I threw down the registration fee for the King Crab Challenge. (That's the Frederick Half marathon, the Baltimore 10 miler and the Baltimore Half). Run all three in the same calendar year and you are rewarded with some sweet swag. Register for them all at once and you save some money on the registration fees.

I love swag and cheaper registration fees, and I was pretty excited to do all of these races this year anyway. They are some of my favorite long distance races in the area.


Pre-Frederick half 2011 (Coach Zach, me, Tracy, Ashleigh)

Frederick is the first of the bunch, held on May 3, and after this past weekend's 5K and 10K I'm feeling pretty good about where my endurance is after this winter.

I was really worried that it would be in shambles after what has felt like months of hibernation and school stress. Sure my speed is largely gone, but at least the endurance is kind of still there.


Post-race soreness is legit though. Spending a lot of time in these bad boys.

And so I spent last night crafting a training plan. It is the first time I've been really, really excited to put together a training plan and tackle half training in a long time.

Sure I've run some halfs in the last couple of years, but the training has been half-assed at best, and I just wasn't toeing the starting line with the best training under my belt.


Navy-Air Force half in September. Not well trained at all.

This time around, I'm sort of ready to actually put in the work. I think I have my school schedule under control for the moment, so I'm hopeful can carve out the time I need to do that.

I don't know that I'll be in a position to PR, but I know I want to show up on race morning feeling confident that I've done the work needed to run a strong race.


I want to be this stupidly happy after I finish the race. (This was the first time I broke two hours in a half. Cried happy tears like a baby.)

I'm excited about running for the first time in a long time, and that's a really fun feeling and it's putting me in a really great mood.