making the most out of it

The only reason I started running again last year was Berlin. Otherwise I was reluctant (more so than I normally am anyhow), since I had also started shooting competitively in 2011. Shooting and running is not a bad combination, provided you get plenty of rest in between. Yet about the only thing that enabled this kind of schedule was cutting down on sleep. I could not reasonably cut down on full-time work, cause that pays for both, yeah.

Since I was getting ready for Berlin anyhow, I thought a couple of other marathons wouldn't hurt. I picked races in Utah and California since each time I could do a pistol match the day before - shoot in Salt Lake City before running in Provo, and in Redwood City before running San Francisco.

I though that would be cool. My own little private set-up for a biathlon, although of course it isn't the real thing. First, because it's on two different days, then because the order is reversed - it's much more interesting to run first and then shoot. There are actually competitions like that - a race shorter than a marathon and a rifle match. Since I shoot pistol, that wouldn't work for me. But I thought, especially before Provo, that would be one neat fervent week-end, a work-out for mind and body, with a good Italian dinner in between.

So I shot my match and I ran my marathon, and the weekend was full. At the end of it I said, So? It hadn't been that intense. It had been exactly what it was, a match and a marathon, a sequence of events, but not a whole greater than the sum of its parts - not synergy or quickening.

Marathons, I thought, are not enough.