Blog#19: World 50k Championships

This past week I had a pretty cool experience to run the 1st ever World 50km championships in Doha, Qatar. This was an opportunity that I found out about in early October, and I decided to jump on board instead of doing Philadelphia marathon. The accommodations and meals would be paid for, but the flight I would have to pay for. So I was able to find a flight for under $1000, which I can justify spending based on the prize money I earn in races. Being the cheap person that I am, I found that I could save several hundred dollars flying Saudia Airlines and having a long stopover in a Saudi Arabian city. Sure! I may be a bit of a minority on that flight, but I don't mind. All though I disagree with the ideology of Islam, I don't have anything against Muslim people, because there are both good Muslims and bad Muslims, good Christians and bad Christians. (The bad Muslims are all over the news, but slightly lesser known are the supposed 'Christians' from Westboro Baptist Church that picket funerals and celebrate it as God's judgment whenever those ISIS wackos do anything). The fact remains that for the two largest religions in the world, these morons make up a tiny minority, and let's pray to God it stays that way! For the flight, I will just have to do without pork or beer on the flights, and on the announcements I will respectfully listen to the supplication that the Prophet used to say before traveling.  

I arrived in Qatar on the Tuesday, three days before the race. The hotel is called the Torch Hotel, and it is stunning. Let's just say I am glad it is paid for, because I would not be able to afford it! The food was amazing, and the rooms came complete with a complimentary mini-bar with pop, water, and non-alcoholic beer (which I tried but it was disgusting). The room came with an Ipad that pretty much controlled the entire room – the color of the lights, the curtains, the TV, the music. For the men's side, it would be Cleve Thorson and myself on the team. The women consisted of Kimberley Doerksen, Catrin Jones, Alissa St. Laurent.  

The race was on Friday at 6pm, and consisted of about 50 men and 30 women. It is considered their winter, but it is still pretty hot, with a race temperature of about 25C at start time. This is not deathly hot, but it is enough to significantly affect you in the later stages in the race, especially if you are not used to training in a hot climate. The 50k is a bit of an odd distance, as it is only 7.8km more than a marathon, but do not let that fool you! A lot can happen in those last 7.8km, especially when it is hot and you are running on an unusual surface. The race was run in 5km loops, and there were several hairpin turns as well as some running on cobblestone surface. My race plan was to just go out with the lead pack and see how long I could handle it. I know the American runners have personal bests a little bit better than me, and similar to my would be goal marathon time of 2:18. The race went out quite conservatively for the first half of the race, we were cruising at around 3:30 per km. At this point I was in 7th place, with a couple of Americans and Kenyans and one Zimbabwe runner ahead of me. I did not feel to bad at this point, but after I hit the halfway mark, the heat started to take its toll. At the 35k mark, my legs started to cramp. On the last lap, I was reduced to a humiliating shuffle. It was bad! How bad was it? I lapped several girls on the 8th and 9th lap, but on the last lap, they were able to 'unlap' me!  I wanted to quit. What is the point of finishing when I am running a pace so much slower than I would, even on an easy recovery run? Well, at that point I have to remind myself that friends and family are watching to see how I do, and it just wouldn't look good for me to quit. Besides, many of them wouldn't know the difference if I ran 2:30  or 4:00, to them, the fact that I place high at a world championships is impressive enough. They don't really care that it is an inaugural event composed mostly of sub-elite runners. I managed to suffer across the line in 3:09, good for 13th place. For me of course, I realize that if I ran this race smarter in terms of pacing and fueling, I realize that top 10 would have been easy, and possibly top 5 if things went well. Some of the race favorites had an even worse time than me, so I guess I can't feel too down on myself. Both two time Detroit Marathon champion Zach Ornelas and last years defending champion Shingirai Badza were behind me.  Nevertheless, I learned from this experience, and God willing, I will be back next year! As I said, the 50k is a strange distance. There were sub 2:18 guys behind me, and there were 2:25 marathoners with 50k experience than finished top 10. A good marathon time may predict  your expected time in a 50k, but there is a lot of variance, especially when you add in variables such as temperature and an unorthodox running surface.  

For the rest of the month, I plan to take some time off to recover, as I start to plan for many changes in my life over the next year. For one thing, I am getting married in June! Also, my fiance landed a job in Abbotsford B.C. as a dietician, so I will join her there and will work part time as a tutor in Abbotsford, while I also seek full time employment as a teacher. Life is like running a road race, and God is the course marshal. I don't have the course memorized, but I trust God to lead me on the twists and turns as I press on towards the goal! Right now, I am in Markham, still working part time as a tutor, but my hours are pitiful, and the few hours I do get are during weekends. I am not even tutoring the subject that I want, and I found the company to be disorganized and their communication with me was lacking. So despite the fact that I enjoyed working with the kids (A group of Muslim students who are pulled out of regular school to study the Koran, and I teach them Math and English on weekends to get them ready for high school) it seems like an obvious decision for me to quit that job, and find something better out in Abbotsford, and join my fiance. God knows that he created me as a person of logic, so I often pray that he use that fact about me to show me in a way that I will understand, the direction he wants me to go, and that the right doors will be opened for me. I have faith of this, and I pray that God will provide for me an opportunity to start a new chapter out in B.C.  where my gifts and talents will have opportunity for growth, and to be used to serve God and others.  

Last time I said I would talk about my opinion of the Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team, so for those of you who don't care about that, feel free to not read any further about my short rant.  

I remember when I was a young kid, and my favorite farm cat would get hit by a car, and it put me to tears. Of course, when I got older, I realized that this was a common occurrence, and future cat deaths did not bother me so much. You may wonder what this has to do with Maple Leafs hockey... but let me explain. I remember the first time I watched the Leafs when I was young, they made it all the way to the semi-finals against Buffalo, and lost. I was so upset, I cried. But of course, in future years, I realize that this is a regular occurrence... and I pretty much come to expect them to let me down. Fast forward to 2013, when I thought I would introduce my now fiance to the extremely rare occurrence of Toronto maple leaf Playoff hockey. When we went out to watch game 7 with a bunch of friends, of all people, SHE was the most upset when they blew a 4-1 lead. Experience veteran fans new better. Despite the unfortunate result, this was the only playoff berth for the inept franchise in the last 10 years or so. You'd think the players who were most responsible for this accomplishment would be respected among both leafs management and their passionate fan base. THINK AGAIN. In that playoff year, the Leafs got quality elite goaltending from James Reimer, something that you need to be competitive in the NHL, and something that the Leafs have lacked for quite some time.  A breakout year for him. Hmmm what should we do next year. I KNOW! Let's look to acquire another goaltender in order to replace him next year, and continue to go with him, even though Reimer has proven himself as a young and up and coming star last year. THAT will be great for his confidence and development! With all due respect to Bernier, this was an idiotic move by the Leafs. But again... idiotic moves are what we come to expect from a team that trades several picks to get an elite player like Phil Kessel, only to trade that player for next to nothing despite several years of consistent top-tier scoring production...I can only guess that the reason is so they can finally get those top 3 draft picks that they should have got several years ago when they traded for Kessel in the first place. And don't get me started on some of the idiotic fans we have. So when Reimer gets shafted from his starting job for no apparent reason, not only does he not get much playing time, but when he does get the opportunity to come in, and has a sub-optimal performance, he is subject to idiotic fans who somehow feel the need to verbally attack his wife! (This happened a few years ago I think) WHAT? I guess some fans (with very low IQ) seem to forget that professional athletes are human beings too.  I guess its no surprise that these same fans also forget that this was the same goalie that had a breakthrough year which was a main reason for ending the long playoff drought of the franchise. I guess as a semi-elite distance runner, I can sympathize more with the amount of discipline and hard work it takes to compete at an elite level of a sport  than the typical average Joe... but C'mon MAN , learn to draw the line somewhere, and refrain from attacking the player's wives!  It's great to see James Reimer stealing a few wins for the Leafs this year, he is my favorite player on the team, however it would probably be best for them to tank, so that they can collect that high draft pick that they should have got several years ago but traded away to a player that they...traded away last year.  

Blog #18 Fall Races Recap

As I began building mileage during the summer months after Ottawa Marathon, I decided to focus my training for another fall marathon. Although my plan would change later on, my original plan was to run Philadelphia marathon, since it is a race in which the typical winning time is something similar to my goal time. The 'A' goal time would be 2:18, with a 'B' goal being any kind of improvement from my Ottawa time. (I think there is plenty of room for improvement from the 2:22 this spring) If I am going to put in the effort of traveling to a marathon, I want to be fairly confident in my ability to at least improve on my PB. As I progressed into July and August, I tried to pick up the intensity of my training, and get in some of those key hard paced long runs, fartleks, tempo sessions that are important for marathon training. Perhaps due to some lingering hip issues, I found it difficult to get into a rhythm. I was able to find a chiropractic college (CMCC)  nearby where I am living in Markham. A fellow runner, Garret DeJong, is an intern there, and he has been very helpful at dealing with some of my hip and lower back issues at an affordable cost. This seemed treatment really helped me out as I entered into the racing part of my schedule in the fall.  

 My first race was the Toronto ZooRun 10k. Unfortunately, this was probably one of my worst races in recent memory. I was unable to manage the conservative pace of the leaders for more than a few km's. By the end I was barely able to manage 3:20/km. I'm not sure what caused this, but I was quite disappointed the following week, and felt a lack of energy. I was quite disappointed, and even contemplated quitting running. For that week, I decided to just run easy mileage...no workouts. Perhaps I was just fatigued and needed to take it easy for a bit.  It seemed to work, because my next long run, I was nearly running the same pace as I did for that race, for the last 5k, and that was without even pushing much of an effort. Things can really change in one week! Moral of the story... If you are in the middle of a marathon build-up and are feeling a lack of energy and unable to get in a rhythm of hitting your goal paces in workouts, try an easy week of base mileage to get some energy back. It might just save your season, and at the very least, it's not like you will lose a great deal of fitness by replacing a few workouts with easy mileage. Willingness to be flexible and read your body as opposed to be a strict and religious about following your training schedule is an important quality of long distance training.  

3 weeks later, I headed into Run for the Toad 25k, with a sense of confidence, because I knew my workouts of the past two weeks indicated that although my 5k/10k speed may not be there, I have the ability to do very well in a 25k trail race. My goal was to break the course record, set by Josephat Ongeri, a solid runner who I have raced many times, and beaten a few times, including edging him by 6 seconds in Around the Bay 2013. So the record would be achievable, but a difficult challenge. I was on pace for this record at the half-way mark, but unfortunately, there were some high winds, and the extra effort required to overcome this may have been what cost me some time in that second lap. I finished about 1 minute away from the record, but over-all it was a solid solo effort. I was happy with this. My former teammate from Campbell, Verrelle Wyatt, won the 50k for the second time in three years, so it was great to catch up with him at this event. 

2 weeks after the Run for the Toad, I offered to be a pacer for the Canadian women at Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon. This being a race where many Canadians are trying to hit Olympic qualifying times, I thought it would be a neat opportunity to try to help some Canadian women attempt a shot at the Olympic dream. Not to mention, it is a great training run for me. I was assigned to pace Natasha Lebaud (PB of 2:34) and Tara Korir, making her marathon debut, also went after the Olympic qualifying pace.  Natasha would need over 4 minute PB to qualify, and with Tara not having run one before, both were longshots to make the standard of 2:29:50,  but not out of the realm of possibility, so I admire their courage to get out and go for it, and I am glad to help them by running at 3:31-32 km a few strides ahead of them, in order to help them out. Natasha lasted about 17k, and Tara lasted about 20k at the goal pace, but after the halfway mark, I  had to slow down and pace whoever was leading between the two of them. I paced Tara for until about 25k, and at that time, she started to fade, which is understandable for the aggressive opening pace, this being her first marathon. Natasha passed Tara at 25k, so I would pace her through to the end of the race. I enjoyed pacing duty. Even though my assigned athletes didn't reach their goals, it was a good experience, and I'd love to do it again. It would be pretty cool to be a part in helping someone to achieve their Olympic dream.  

Around this same time, I also had a change in plans in my focus race of the season. Instead of running Philadelphia marathon, I found out from the elite coordinator of Run for the Toad, that I am qualified for 50k world championships, based on my result in the 50k last year. This takes place in Doha, Qatar! This is an experience that I cannot pass up on. I also feel as though based on how my training is going, a 50k is a better option for me. My hard long runs at 3:20-3:35/km efforts are feeling a lot smoother than my tempo run efforts at marathon goal pace. The elite field at 50k is not nearly the same caliber of talent as world championship events of marathon or lower. This is most likely due to lack of significant prize money that is offered in events longer than the marathon.  Most elite distance runners would rather focus their training for a marathon with an attractive prize purse and travel/accommodations provided than pursue a 50k world championship event that is relatively new and unknown event. That being said, I might just possibly have a shot at the podium for this thing!  

My most recent race was the Road2hope Marathon in Hamilton this past weekend. My plan was to run this one at 50k effort. It would be a solo effort from the start, with no other runners in my pace range entering the race.  km's 0-9 had a nice tail wind to help us out, but the stretch from 9-20km would be battling a tough headwind. The tailwind km's I cruised at 3:20's and it felt easy. The headwind km's were more in the 3:25ish range, and it started to get to me. Thankfully, km 20-30 is almost completely downhill, so during this stretch I was able to relax and get some energy back, while at the same time cruising at 3:20/km down the redhill valley parkway. As one might expect for a solo effort marathon those last 12k were a bit of a challenge, but seeing that this was not a full out effort, it wasn't like I was hurting as bad as I normally would in a full out effort. Regardless, I was still struggling about 3:30/km during the final flat portion of the race, which is fine with me. At 30k, the possibility of running a PB was still there, but the motivation to maintain my pace on a solo effort wasn't there. I am more concerned about getting a solid effort in, and being able to recover so that I can run my best race for the 50k on December 4.  I was not planning to go run a PB in this race, but I ended up pretty close, running just under 2:24, so I was pretty happy with that. My plan was to negative split and go 2:24 by doing 72:30/71:30. In reality I went closer to 71:30/72:30,  but hey, that's close enough. For the next few weeks, I'll probably try to get one or two key long progression run to teach my body to run fast on those last 10-15k that will be so tough in the 50k. Other than that, I feel as though my training has gone quite smoothly over the last month or so.  The race is coming up on Dec.4, so I have one month to go yet. It should be a cool experience! I am so thankful for God's provision and keeping me healthy so that I can have these opportunities. There are always going to be tough times when you feel like giving up (in running...and in life) but God is faithful and he does provide you with what you need, and some times, graciously more! 

And now for my non-running portion of the blog,I thought I would voice my two cents on the recent happenings in the Toronto sports world. It was pretty exciting to see the Blue Jays have a playoff run this year. Bautista's bat-flip home run would end a long drought of over 11 years of Toronto sports teams winning as much as a single playoff series in the three major sports leagues they are a part of (mlb,nhl, nba). Back when I was in Grade 9, the Leafs beat the Senators in the first round, only to lose in the second round (of course). So that Bautista home-run really represented a change in a losing culture for an entire city, pretty exciting stuff!  This team definitely had the talent to win the world series, however in the Kansas City series, game 6, Moustakas hits a ball that should have went off the wall for a double, but because a fan reached out and caught the ball, it was ruled a home-run. If this event had not happened, it is very possible that the Blue Jays could have won that game. It's pretty crazy how a fan can have an influence on determining a potential series clinching game for a team, but that's the way it goes sometimes. I do find it ironic that the Blue Jays lost this way... because, you see, they had a chance to wrap up home-field advantage in the last week of the regular season, however, as soon as they clinched the division title, they brought out the champagne bottles, and let their minor league team play the next couple of games...games they would need to win if they would guarantee home advantage throughout the playoffs. They instead decided to party it up. Shameful for a professional sports organization!  It would be like celebrating winning a marathon at mile 23. There's still 3 crucial miles to go! Don't let up! But that's what they chose to do, and it cost them home advantage in the ALCS. If they had home advantage om game 6, perhaps a fan wouldn't have caused a critical run that could have cost them the game. Maybe they still would have lost... or maybe the Toronto version of Steve Bartman would've been in attendance (if you don't know who he is, ask a Chicago cubs fan) But the point is... not having home advantage COULD have cost them a world series. So UNTIL you win the whole thing, don't whip out the champagne and act like drunken idiots. Maybe after you win the world series, then you can do that. Partying before the race is over is something you may see in a Usain Bolt parody youtube video, but should not be for a professional sports organization.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzSpPaCIG0g It's great they ended a 22 year playoff drought, but it could have been a lot more.  

Speaking about Toronto sports teams that  make poor decisions, let's talk about Toronto Maple Leafs hockey...just kidding... but perhaps for my next blog, stay tuned!

Blog #17 Spring Races 2015

Here is a summary of my spring races of Aroud the Bay 30k, Montreal Half Marathon, and Ottawa Marathon:

                

On the last week of March, I ran Around the Bay once again, for the 3^rd time in 4 years. It is a race in which I have a history of success, so it was a good one to kick off the spring racing schedule with. This year would be a slight course change. Due to construction there would be no heartbreak hill at the 26km mark. There was a decent tailwind for the first 10k of the race, so the lead pack really banked some time. In that pack included last year’s defending champion, as well as Kip Kangogo and Sami Jibril. After a few km, I had to decide to let them go, and hope that I could reel some of them in later.  I went through 10k in 30:30 apparently, but I don’t really trust those km markers.  Regardless, I paid for it in the final 10k! There was some speculation that the overall course distance was inaccurate, whether it was too long or too short I’m not sure. What it means for me is I didn’t really care too much of my final time in this race, but looked at my time behind Sami Jibril and Kip Kangogo as a better measuring stick for my performance. Those are both very solid runners, more accomplished than me, so to be within a minute of them indicated that I was on the right track.  

               

 At the end of April, I raced the Montreal Half Marathon. It was also the week that I finished my final practicum of teacher’s college, so I was excited to be finished up with that. I am so thankful to God that I was able to get into the one year program, because next year it is a two year program! It is definitely  a money grab to turn it into two years, as the program definitely doesn’t need to be that long. Oh well, good for me, as it might allow the job market to open up as less people well be admitted.  For the Montreal race, I stayed at my brother Ian’s place.  He is in his first year at law school at McGill University in Montreal.  Olympic marathoner Eric Gillis would be running, so top 2 would be a good goal for me. He mentioned he was planning to run a conservative pace (for him), so I decided to run with him for as long as I could. We went through 10k in 31:00 , and that is about where I started to fall off. I was able to catch a runner who beat me at Around the Bay in the previous month, so I was happy with my ability to hold a decent pace in the back half of the race, despite being on my own for much of it. It was a decent result to finish 2nd place in 1:06:39. This was a bit over one minute above my personal best, but considering my less than ideal training in the weeks heading into this race due to some tendinitis in the top of my foot, I was happy with this.

                

This past weekend was Ottawa Race Weekend. I’m not quite at the standard to hit elite A status yet, so I didn’t get a hotel room, but thankfully my cousin Michelle lives nearby in Gatineau and was willing to host me for the weekend!   I set an ambitious goal of trying to hit below 2:18, an attempt at Pan-Am standard. Lucas MacAneney had the same goal, and we would have a pacer to help us out with this. We went through 5k in just under 16:30 and 10k in 32:45, so we were already off pace a bit early on, even though our pacer kept telling us we were on pace according to his GPS. I guess that's why I don’t invest in those things. Can’t trust them. Had I been a bit more confident in my fitness and ability to go sub 2:18, I might have made more an effort to tell the pacer to pick it up, but considering my inexperience in the marathon, a conservative pace to begin with wasn’t too bad of an idea.  As it turned out, I started to fall off pace at around 25k, and the rest of the race was basically just ‘long run’ pace in survival mode, just hoping for something in the low 2:20’s. Lucas was able to keep pace much better, nearly catching Rob Watson, who went through half way about 3 minutes faster than us. I ended up 10^th place. As I struggled through the final stretch and finally saw the finish line, I heard the announcer say “This is not the women’s champion yet, this just another one of our men’s finishers” ...  a relieving feeling to know that I was not going to get ‘chicked’ in this race, a very real danger in these more elite races, where the women  very well be capable of low 2:20’s or under. I can take consolation in the fact that I was 3^rd place Canadian and 10^th overall in one of the most competitive Marathons in Canada. I look forward to taking some recovery time, and then to come up with a training strategy to decrease my chances of falling apart in the late stages of the race. A lot of time can be shaved off if I can just hold myself together a bit longer. Those painful 3:40 km’s at the end really add up! Even if I make it up to 35km on pace instead of 25km before falling off pace like that, I will be able to shave enough off my time to dip under 2:20.

               

  Considering I was busy balancing finishing up teacher’s college with my training, it has been an okay series of spring races. I am not hugely disappointed with my results, but there is a lot of improvement to be made at the Marathon distance based on my personal bests in half marathon and 30k. It’s okay though, it takes a few attempts at the Marathon before being able to master it and run your full potential.  All though I had no major injury troubles this build up, I did have some tendinitis issues at the top of my foot that caused me to do a bit of cross training.  Once in February , and again another week in between Around the Bay and Montreal Half Marathon. What I have learned in the past is the importance of reading you body in these situations and trying to make the most of cross training while this happens. It can be easy to panic about losing fitness, but it is critical to listen to your body rather than  to run through injury. There is that fuzzy grey area where you are not sure if a pain is something you are able to train through or not, and this can be frustrating. My rule of thumb is if it hurts enough that it sucks the joy out of running, then it is time to do some form of cross-training. A week or so of elliptical will not have too much of a detrimental effect on your fitness, especially if you have the mental ability to train HARD on it. Yea, simulating a 2-hr long run on elliptical is incredibly boring, but you gotta do what you gotta do. A bit of non-impact training might just be what my body needs to recover from the pounding on the roads. That being said, these small little injuries can impede a marathon training schedule a little. In this particular build-up, it prevented me from being able to do some of those hard effort 20+ mile long runs where I start at 6:00 and try to close at 5:30 pace. These where the type of runs that I was able to do in some of my more successful training stints, (such as my 2012 and 2013 spring racing seasons). Still, being able to get to the start line at Ottawa with an opportunity to get more experience at the Marathon distance is more valuable than trying to run through injury and finding myself injured in April and May when the weather is finally nice. I was still able to get some solid 40-65 minute tempo runs in the 3:10-3:13/km range, and my Around the Bay 30k/Montreal Half Marathon results were only a minute or so slower than my best. These indicated that my fitness was comparable to what it was in previous years. Perhaps it is my lack of getting in those quality long runs that would be my downfall in not being able to survive at 2:18 marathon pace for more than 25k. My body simply wasn’t prepared for hard efforts past the 90 minute range. I know I have it in me, but I think it comes down to tweaking my training, and making adjustments. Of course, if I can stay relatively injury free, that will go a long way.  A 2:22:53 is not a time I am hugely disappointed about, but there is a lot of improvement to be made for the next one!

                

I will now take some time off to recover, as I start to think about how I will schedule my fall racing schedule, and what Marathon I will focus on. I have some ideas in mind, but nothing determined for certain yet. Some likely build up races are the 10k Zoo Run, and Run for the Toad, (this time, just the 25k). I think I will tweak my training philosophy as well for the next build up.  Instead of running an even amount of mileage each day, I will try running the majority of my mileage on the 3 most important training days, the long run, the tempo, and the interval/fartlek/race day.  For example, if I average 20 miles on those 3 key days of the week, even if I only combine for 20-30 miles in the other 4 days , that would total 80-90 miles. Some people might argue 80-90 miles is not enough for a marathoner, but I would disagree. There is no ‘X’ amount of mileage that will lead you to success, and sometimes runners can get wrapped up in the trap of overemphasizing reaching a certain number for the week. Why measure things on a seven day scale? Why start your counting on Sunday, or Monday? (or whatever day you chose). These things are all arbitrary, but they determine that magic ‘number’ that some people think is more meaningful than it is.  It’s kind of like how baseball fans get excited over a pitcher’s W-L record or amount of ‘saves’. Sure they are ‘predictors’ of how good the pitcher is, but they are extremely poor predictors, based on arbitrary conditions. In the same way, number of miles run is extremely poor predictor in how effective your training is. Much more important is to make sure the key elements are there. For marathon training, its the long run, the marathon pace tempo, and the speed sessions at half-marathon to 10k pace.  For my next build up, I am not planning to increase the amount of mileage, or even focus at all at hitting X amount of miles for a week. More focus will be on changing the way those miles are run. If I do more of that mileage on quality days, and focus on recovery during the other days, I believe I will be getting most bang for my buck in training days, while minimizing risk of injury by doing only short runs on the recovery days. 

                

After graduating from teacher college in Windsor in April, I moved to Markham this month, and I am renting a place near my girlfriend Anne. She is finishing up her internship to become a Dietitian this summer. I am working part time over the summer at a Private School/Tutor Center in Markham. I also do some online tutoring, which is a convenient gig to earn income without leaving home.  The job market is tough to find full time teaching work at the moment, but I am content at least for the next few years to do part time tutoring which will still give me enough time to continue running seriously. I will still be continuing to trust God and seek his will as he guides me on the next stage of my life. There are certainly a lot of unknowns at this point in my life, but I trust that God will provide.