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By Mitchell Clayton (mitchellclaytontriblog.wordpress.com)

 

(Posted on January 11, 2018 by Mitch)

 

Last racing season was weird. I didn’t train at all in the off-season, I took all of June off to train, I raced 4 times in July (with sub-par results), and I took all of August off of racing to prepare for my first half-ironman at the end of August (which was going GREAT until a bike crash and then a flat tire).  This was substantially different than the 5 prior seasons, which involved off-season training and 10-12 sprints throughout the summer.

If last season was weird, my 2018 racing season is going to be freaky.

Let’s just rip the Band-Aid off, and then I’ll explain myself. Buckle-up.  Here it goes.

In 2018, I’m racing 2 marathons and 2 half-ironmans.

Yep, you read that right.  No sprints (well, maybe 1 or 2 if I would otherwise have a bike and run workout that day), 2 long distance triathlons, and 2 MARATHONS (if you know anything about my triathlon performances, my run has always been comparatively weak). Now, I’ll try to justify my bad decision making for all the critics out there (the 1 or 2 of you who actually read my stuff)...

 

My race choices are the culmination of 2 factors. NO, ONE OF THESE FACTORS IS NOT THAT GWEN JORGENSON MADE THE SWITCH TO MARATHON. In early September, my buddy Michael Palo asked me if I wanted to run the TC Marathon with him in October of 2018. I took this as more of a challenge. Not a challenge to beat him, but to mix things up a little and to see what I’m physically capable of. I know that marathons are tough, and I didn’t want TC to be my first marathon, so I registered for Grandma’s marathon in June.  From this point forward, my 2018 season is going to focused around distance running in preparation for my two marathons.  The second factor influencing my race schedule was my DNF at the Superiorman Half last August.  I had an itch to redeem myself and actually finish a half-ironman.  I figured that I could use my season-long marathon training as my run training for half-ironmans, so I made the choice to fit 2 of them into my schedule between my two marathons.  READ MORE