I'm so excited about my next marathon! I did A LOT of research on Spring races and wanted a marathon to happy sometime in the month of April (giving me around a month before my MS Run The US Relay). I didn't want to travel too far, so the Salt Lake City Marathon seemed like the perfect option! I've been to SLC a few times and ran there once (it was really challenging)! The race also starts where the 2002 Olympic Village was, which is really special (I've always wanted to visit there)!

It also is happening on my birthday weekend, so what better way to celebrate my last few days as being 27 than running 26.2 miles! I may even run 1.8 miles further to celebrate turning 28 ; )

The marathon does look slightly challenging with some hills in the middle section of the race, but I'm planning to add many hill runs into my training plan (for my relay race) so those shouldn't be an issue. 

It also happens 1 month before the start of my relay, so the timing couldn't be better! 

I tried most of the weekend to pin down what my time goal for the race will be (I always like to put a bit larger goal for each race than what is my ultimate- i.e. training for a 3:50 marathon when I would be really happy to just hit sub-4 : ) ...), and I will be training for 3:45 marathon! Ultimately if I get anything under 3:50 I'd be ECSTATIC - I'll be doing another post next week talking about my goals for 2018 (including how this marathon pace will play into my overall goal time for next year). 

I still have a few more weeks of base building, hill training, and easy paces (along with a lot of strength training). The last week in December will kick off my first week of training (and following again the Hanson's Marathon Training Plan). 

I'm still trying to decide what my other races for 2018 will be. Researching potential races is really exciting though! I'd love to try to get another state or two checked off my list : )

Ever done the Salt Lake City Marathon? Any advice?!

What's your next race? Any fun races you have coming up in 2018?