Bruges, Cape Elizabeth, Cayman Islands, Falmouth, New Caledonia + Nebraska's Sandhills
Races you'll love running + a few great reads
Good morning, my friends! ☀️
When I’m following a training plan, I find the early weeks especially to be easy to stick to — the mileage is lower and less challenging, and each run takes less time.
Later in the plan, as the mileage climbs higher and the long runs, particularly, become more challenging, it can be more difficult to stay 100 percent faithful to a plan, because life just has a way of intervening sometimes, as we all know.
I stumbled across this great tip by Hal Higdon, a running coach you may be familiar with thanks to the dozens of books he’s written and his presence on Twitter, where he offers up wisdom from a lifetime of running in bite-sized amounts several times a day.
This week, he shared a bit of wisdom that I found really helpful — few of us can stick to our training plans perfectly faithfully, so it’s important to let yourself off the hook now and then:
I love this advice. Each of us is different, with our own unique lives and circumstances, and time available to run. Outside plans and goals are meant to help us and lift us up, not hold us back — if they do, or if we just end up kicking ourselves for not being able to measure up to them, that might be a sign we need to adjust our goals rather than beat ourselves up.
Higdon has so much wisdom to share — his Twitter account is a gold mine of helpful advice.
I hope you’re waking up to a wonderful Sunday and have the chance to get a great run in today — keep in touch and be well.
Your friend,
— Terrell
Races you might love running
Sandhills Half Marathon
Valentine, Nebraska | Saturday, June 4, 2022
Filled with a combination of pristine prairie grasses and hilly sand dunes that lie atop the massive Ogallala Aquifer, the region known as the Sandhills of Nebraska plays host to this annual race as spring is giving way to summer. The race features a long, gradual downhill point-to-point route that unfolds along the Brownlee Road here. Along the way, the course unfolds through the stark, vast and still largely untouched beauty of the Sandhills region; aside from the paved roads and fencing along the highways, there are few signs of civilization out here on the prairie, where you can see literally for miles.
$85 and up | Sign up here
Beach to Beacon 10K
Cape Elizabeth, Maine | Saturday, August 6, 2022
Founded in the late 1990s by Cape Elizabeth native Joan Benoit Samuelson, the first-ever winner of the women’s Olympic marathon at the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles, this race follows a beautifully scenic point-to-point route along the coastline of Casco Bay. Starting from Crescent Beach State Park, the race heads north along Route 77 and the Shore Road, which brings runners up along the Atlantic Ocean coastline, past spots like Smugglers Cove and Pond Cove, before heading north to Fort Williams, where you’ll finish the race near the Portland Head Lighthouse, one of the most-photographed lighthouses in the world.
$55 and up | Sign up here