So... now what?

Have you ever had that moment when you achieved a goal and wondered? A long standing goal that you ached over, stressed about, obsessively discussed and researched to death? Completed, felt amazing for a long time following and talked about with everyone you met? Like graduating, losing weight, getting married, babies, or what I know best, running marathons? :-)

And then you were left with the burning question.... so now what?

I'm kinda feeling like that. And I am thinking that it should be described as "life after the Boston Marathon."

Don't get me wrong, I have a few ideas up my sleeve as to how I want to focus my time and energy for the next few months. In fact, I am fighting the urge to sign up for a couple of different half marathon races in June, July and October. I'm even toying with the idea of taking some yoga classes as a way to get this cranky periformis issue that I have been dealing with now for two months.

However, I completed Boston feeling as though I had finally met my new friend called Destination and gotten a sense of that feeling of accomplishment and the relishing that comes with it. I will agree that it was a pretty amazing feeling to achieve the goal that I had chased for literally four years. However, I have noticed that I am keen to jump back onto the hamster wheel that I will call Journey to keep moving.

Greg asked me a hypothetical question the other day that I will admit to struggling to find an answer. The question:

1. Would I do something to guarantee me to be extremely fit, if it meant that I didn't race at all? or




2. Would I do races, but it would not guarantee being really fit?

I will admit, I really struggled with this question. After all, I have been training and chasing after medals for over 10 years now. It is something that I know and love and hold dear. However, if I were able to take on a challenge where I would be super fit, but it didn't involve any races, would I be interested? I guess I struggled as I have always had that medal, or carrot, or whatever prize you want to describe it as, dangling in front of me. I don't know anything else, and I am driven by it. However, the conversation where I could do something, say, take up hot yoga five days a week to become super fit, would that be something I would take on?

I guess it all depends on what motivates us. Do we need shiny medals to be proud of, or is it just the fact that we feel satisfied with what we see when we look in the mirror? I have never been super fit and no love handles, so the concept of having a hard body is just something that I have thought that would be a nice to have, but not something that would motivate me to become super strict with diet and training. Do I lean towards racing because it's the familiar or because I love the challenge? This definitely sounds like the kind of question that I should ponder. Good timing, as Greg and I are going on holidays to Puerto Vallarta Mexico in roughly 36 hours (um, yay!) and I feel like I am mentally starting to check out.

In fact, I have all sorts of grand plans of sleeping, swimming, running, lounging and doing this thing I saw on the brochures called R-E-L-A-X-I-N-G. It's a fairly new concept for me, and I think I am a little keen to explore it.

Something tells me I already know the answer to Greg's hypothetical question. But in the meantime, I think I will continue to challenge myself physically with my usual suspects of activities.

After all, June 5th is fast approaching.