Now what do I do?

When I woke up this morning it finally hit me that my training has finished and my goal was accomplished. I'm someone who needs to live goal to goal so I have a few more races planned for the spring and summer months. They include at least 2 more 50mile trail races, an endurance race (either 6 or 12 hours, not sure which one yet) and possibly a marathon.

My immediate goal is just to heal myself from this weekend. My kids made me promise them that I wouldn't run until Thursday so that's what I'll do. I'll probably start doing some light biking over the next two days so my legs can recover quicker.

It is a little bit of a downer knowing that my training has finished as I looked forward to each run as I used it to build momentum for my race. After talking with several experienced ultra runners on the weekend, I realized that I don't need to do much training between races right now. My training was done in the winter months. Now I can use the runs to sharpen up different areas and then I should be fine for the races.

For example, my next 50 mile race will be at Sulphur Springs in May but I probably won't do anything longer than a 30K run between now and then. That doesn't mean I'll stop running but I can be smarter about my running between now and then.

I don't think I'll have any difficulty taking the next few days off from running as I have too many blisters right now anyway. I'll take these days to reflect on what I did right and what I did wrong during my last race and then I'll have a strategy ready for the next time I run.