It's Freep marathon weekend!

The 2014 marathon medal.

This Sunday will be the first Sunday in 5 years I’m not running a Free Press Marathon event.

The Freep was my very first marathon in 2010. In 2011 I was still recovering from a tibial stress fracture, and in 2012 friends of ours got married out of town marathon weekend (How dare anyone schedule a wedding during marathon season without consulting me first!), so I ran Indianapolis instead, setting what was then a monster PR of 15 and a half minutes.

I ran the Freep full again in 2013, 2014, and 2015, and the half last year as my husband’s first big race. I know a lot of people might not like to do the same races over and over, but it’s my hometown race, you get to run into Canada and back, and I love it. So I do it.

This year, my training has been iffy and my husband hasn’t really been running at all, so we’re “only” doing the 5K on Saturday. Not going to lie, I am looking forward to a commitment of a couple of hours, max, and that’s after adding in the expo and getting to the race. I’ll have all day Sunday to catch up on stuff around the house, prep food for the week, and maybe get in my own long (non-26.2 miles long, that is) run that day.

The marathon will always be there and I’m not sad about missing it this year. I’m glad they have the 5K for us who have been slacking on our training. And… there’s still plenty of time to train for a spring marathon. We happened to be in Ottawa for our honeymoon during their marathon weekend, and our 10-year anniversary is next year, so maybe that would be a good time to return. We’ll see what the next few months throws at us.