New Year, New Run: Preparations for Au Marathon Louisiane

Happy New Year!  I suspect that anyone who reads blogs regularly is tired of reading New Years posts, and I am ten days late to the game. I'll just jump straight into what I'm doing at this point in the year: next weekend, I am taking back the marathon distance.

Rendevous Baton Rouge will take place from January 16-18, 2015, with a 5K and quarter marathon on January 17 and a half and full marathon on January 18. For the extra crazy people, there's the Déjà Vu Award. What is the Déjà Vu Award, you ask? Well, here's what the race organizers have to say about it:

The phrase déjà vu is a French term that literally means “already seen.” The phenomenon of déjà vu is to have the sensation that an event or experience currently being experienced has been experienced in the past, when in fact it hasn’t. 

For this reason, we have created the Déjà Vu Award for those runners who see the finish line two days in a row.

Winners of the Déjà Vu Award receive a special Marathon de Louisiane Crawfish Plate, which I was all about when I signed up for the quarter and full marathons back in July 2014. I figured I would stay in my version of marathon shape for several straight months, so two races in one weekend was no big deal. Plus, I could eat so. much. crawfish. on that swanky plate.

Although I was super motivated to train hard, run fast, and not skip workouts after the Marine Corps Marathon, everything fell apart in December. I quit training, then I got sick and didn't want to train, then it was Christmas Break. I resumed running right after Christmas and even did a 10K last weekend, but I will definitely be going into the Louisiana Marathon much differently than I did the Marine Corps Marathon. My goal for the race is to finish and feel good when I do. In addition to focusing on carb loading this week, I am going to get myself pumped up with positive self talk so I don't go into the race freaked out and questioning myself like I did with the Marine Corps Marathon.

Fortunately for me, this is a much smaller race, and I don't think they even have buses. I looked at the course map, and there are 22 opportunities for water stations. I think I am going to break the race down into water stops as I go. Several members of the Red Felt Running Club will be running on Sunday, and I am excited to share the course with many of them. We are also going meet up for dinner on Saturday, which is a welcome outing for me since RWD won't be with me, and I was going to eat by myself or overpay for the race's Pastalaya Dinner.

Here's to proving myself to myself!