The Triathlon Rx

If you and I are buddies on Facebook, you know my most recent status update sounded a little something like this: That’s right.. it’s race calendar time –  early registration fee deadlines are passing, prices are going up, spots are filling up, and I need to figure out which races I want to dedicate my time and efforts to before I miss my chance! As much as I would love to just do as many races as possible this summer, there are several inhibiting factors to that ideal:

• $$
• time
• the preservation of my bones, muscles, and what’s left of my left hip

If you really know me though, you know I’m mostly just talkin’ $$ here. Training alone isn’t free, but racing takes a big bite out of my Sperly-Financial-Pie. There are several things I take into consideration when building my yearly racing calendar:

• Distance of race
• Date of race
• Cost of registration
• Location
• Cost of traveling to ^ location
• Size of race
• Who else do I know racing?
• Have I done this race before? Did I do well?
• Race’s history (race day conditions? organized well? course support? crowd support?)

Given those considerations, here are the races I’m considering for 2010. I would LOVELOVELOVE any and all input from you, especially if you have done one of these races before or heard good (or bad!) things about it. Some of these races I’ve done before – you can check out some of my RACE REPORTS – others would be a first time. If you’re a fellow runner / triathlete from Minnesota and still trying to build YOUR race calendar, maybe some of these will give you ideas!

RUNNING RACE OPTIONS 2010

Med City Marathon 2008

(5Ks not included.. those are all last minute registrations)

• May 30th – Med City Marathon (See my race report from when I last did that one!)
• June 6th – Minneapolis Marathon (A fairly new race.. I hear good things)
• July 19th – Grandma’s Marathon (My race report on it. Plus, THIS girl might be there for her birthday?)
• August 7th – Urban Wildland Half Marathon (One of my faves for sure! Race report)
• August 14th – Gopher to Badger Half (had a buddy end up in an ambulance during this one…)
• August 21st-22nd – Ragnar Great River Relay (WILL be doing this one again! Pre-Race)
• September 7th - Victory Memorial 10K/5K Double Header (Will for sure do again. Race Report)
• October 3rd - Twin Cities Marathon (The country’s most beautiful urban marathon, obviously!)
• October 30th – Monster Dash Half Marathon (Wasn’t blogging yet when I ran this for the first time. Home course.. fast.. love Team Ortho races!)
• October XX – Moose Mountain Trail Marathon (don’t see a 2010 official date yet…)

TRI RACE OPTIONS 2010

St. Croix Valley Triathlon 2009

• April 17th – USAT Collegiate Nationals – Lubbock, TX (Already registered. CAN’T WAIT!)
• June 12th – Liberty Half Iron
• June 19th – High Clif Half Iron
• August 14th-15th – Green Lake Olympic (Didn’t do a race report, just a photo. LOVED it.)
• August 22nd – St. Paul International
• September 5th – St. Croix Valley Olympic (Race Report. Froze my a$$ off during the bike, but loved it!)
• September 12th – Square Lake Half Iron (Buddy on the team did this last year – I went up to cheer and run the race course. There was great race support!)

So obviously I have some hang-ups here… some races are on the same day (Grandma’s Marathon & High Cliff Half Iron, Gopher to Badger Half and Green Lake Tri)… I wouldn’t do two half iron’s two weekends in a row (Liberty Half and High Cliff)… and I don’t have the money to register for all of these even if I wanted to! It would be pretty damn cool to just eat, train, race, and repeat (and get paid to do it), but there are two little things I need to keep in mind – finishing up with Kinesiology and Med School. And paying for both of them. Anyways, these are just ideas that I have circling around in my head. I told a girl on my team that I want to report back tomorrow and have registered for at least TWO of my summer races, so we’ll see where that goes but I’ll keep you posted!

If you need help figuring out your race calendar, and are from Minneapolis/St. Paul or our lovely state of Minnesota, I would be more than happy to give my opinion on the local races I’ve done (they’re definitely all not listed or accounted for under the RUNhard tab)! I also want to share some great resources to get you started:

Apple Raceberry Jam

Vacation Sports

Midwest Events

SCS Multisport

Good luck to you, good luck to me, I’ll report back soon with any decisions!
-E