So I didn’t run the Skunk Cabbage Classic.  My first race of the year come and gone and I was not there to toe the line.  I’m a little bummed, but familial obligations called.  My brother’s last High School Musical was this past weekend and there was no way I could miss it.  I’m glad I went, the show was great and he was fantastic, especially considering it was a musical and he was playing a mute!  It was a lot of driving and a little stressful to be back and forth between here and Jersey two weekends in a row but it was definitely worth it, even if it meant missing a race.  So instead I need to look forward reassess and figure out what’s coming next.  The next race I had planned was the Rec Way 10k at the end of May, I may fit a 5k in somewhere before then just for fun since a lot of those are coming up, but I think I’m going to start ramping up my mileage again in a couple weeks.  Nicer weather is arriving, the past few days have been beautiful, though I’ve done more hiking than running recently, but at least I’ve been outside.  10 miles is the longest race distance I had set for myself at the start of the year, but at the moment at least, I’m feeling like that’s really not going to be that hard to achieve.  I’m considering starting a half marathon plan (did I really just say that!) and making it twice as long, basically do each week twice before moving on to the next one.  I still have some research to do, I’ve been liking the Hal Higdon plans but Kickrunners has one too and there are others floating around the internet as well.  I think most of them are about 2 months long, so if I double it that’s about 4 months of training and building myself a good base, and I’m looking at being up to the distance by the end of summer which leaves me all fall to maintain and find a suitable HM which I’ve still been carrying around in the back of my mind.  I feel insane.  I’ve been running for 1 year now (as of some time very soon, I’ll have to check Coolrunning and see if I can figure that one out) and when I started I figured you know I’d get to the 5k distance and that would be great and I’d be happy with myself.  The thought of running even a HM seemed a long way off.  I guess though with the backpacking trips and knowing that I can do the distance in one day while lugging a bunch of crap around on my back without any real repercussions makes it that much easier to wrap my mind around being able to run the distance.  Sure its still twice as far as I’ve ever ran before, but as I’ve said many times, give me a little sunshine and my whole outlook on the world changes dramatically.   Anything is possible once spring arrives.