Hello friends! Long time no see. I have some really good news to share with you today … tax season is OFFICIALLY OVER! Thank. Good. Ness. Of all the seasons I’ve done thus far in my career (this was lucky #13 (which explains A LOT)), this one was was quite challenging for a lot of reasons, both professionally and personally. I know from past experience that there is always light after darkness. It’s time to bring on the light!
I’ll try to keep the work stuff brief, because I know you didn’t come to a running blog to read about tax law, nor do you likely find it interesting in the slightest. The main gist is that we had six MAJOR pieces of legislation with major tax implications passed within about a one-year time span. For those of you that care, it was the Coronavirus Preparedness and Response Supplemental Appropriations Act on 03-06-20, the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA) on 03-18-20, the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES) on 03-27-20, the Consolidated Appropriations Act on 12-27-20, the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) on 03-11-21 and most recently the American Families Plan on 04-28-21.
In a typical year, we might have one, maybe two pieces of legislation, but six is unheard of. It was very challenging to stay on top of the all of the changes. Things would be presented one way and then reversed in a later act or better yet, made effective retroactively. “Retroactive” is not a word that any CPA wants to hear as it applies to tax law. Oh! There was also the dreaded deadline change. I am totally fine with committing to a crazy work schedule for 3.5 months, but I have zero desire to commit to it for 7.5 months (last year) or even 4.5 months (this year). My firm basically took the position that the deadline was still April 15th like normal and we got as many returns as possible wrapped up by that date. We still finalized several returns between April 15th and the May 17th deadline, but the last month wasn’t too bad.
Anywho, that’s enough of that. Let’s chat about running, shall we?
My training has really lacked any semblance of structure so far this year and it’s been nice to just get out there and do whatever I feel like doing on the day. So many things in my life are VERY structured and running has always been one of the many structured things. It’s fun to run for pure enjoyment and love of the sport and not because I am hard-core chasing some sort of crazy goal.
I will admit that it does feel a little bit strange to not feel like I am trying to be the best runner I can be, but at the same time, it also just feels right. I have no doubt that running made me a better person over the years. The process of setting, working towards and meeting big goals on the roads has given me the confidence to set, work towards and meet big goals off the roads as well. There was a time when working towards those goals on the roads was paramount to my growth as a person outside of running, but now I don’t feel like I need the running piece of it in order to be my “best self.” Does that make sense? Just go with it.
Oddly enough, I ran 1,040 miles during the first 20 weeks of this year. Form 1040 is the standard individual tax return form number, so it’s cool (in a super nerdy way) that my year-to-date mileage throughout this tax season was exactly that! Without any major goals or races coming up, I decided that a fun challenge for tax season would be to run more miles per week than the number of hours that I worked each week with a caveat of “as long as nothing crazy happens.” In my mind, I wanted this to be a weekly goal and not a cumulative goal (so the hours weren’t supposed to carry over from week to week), but I made an executive decision mid-season tweak to the rules. I won’t bore you with the weekly mileage and weekly hours worked (not until the very end of the post anyway :)), but the key takeaways are that 1) something crazy did happen and 2) I ran more miles during the season than total hours worked.
Most of the miles that I have run in 2021 to date have been purely easy miles, but there have been a few workouts sprinkled in as well (those details are also at the very end of this post for those of you who are interested in the specifics). My easy pace has dropped a little bit, which was unexpected, but makes sense given the lack of quality work. Less quality sessions = less recovery needed. My easy pace has typically been somewhere around 8:15-8:45, but I’d say that currently my easy pace is somewhere around 7:45-8:15.
I tentatively set my sights on a 5k at the end of February. I was only even halfway considering this because my husband’s volunteer fire department was working traffic control at the race. Our hobbies very rarely overlap, so this was an interesting opportunity. Right around the middle of February those “big life changes” that I referred to earlier popped up when we found out that we were pregnant! Cue all the feels! It shouldn’t have been a big surprise and yet, I was shocked. In the back of my mind, I figured that we’d have to do some sort of fertility treatments to get there. I even went and got a COVID test because I wasn’t feeling well. As it turned out, I tested positive, but not for COVID! Ha.
As soon as I found out I was pregnant, I immediately shut down any sort of hard running and I only did short, easy miles. From the limited research that I did (i.e., asking Google), it seems that the heart rate guidelines have changed a bit and that it might be okay to push it a little bit more than what was once was thought to be “acceptable” during pregnancy. Regardless, I knew that for me, the best decision was to cool the jets a bit and to take it easy. My mom had two miscarriages (and yes, this is where the story is headed) and in the back of my mind, I’ve always known that was going to be a potential issue for me as well.
I guess you could say that I was cautiously optimistic, while also trying to be realistic about the fact that 1 in 5 pregnancies result in a loss. Even so, I was not prepared for the immense grief and sadness that I experienced in the weeks immediately after the miscarriage. I was only 6 weeks pregnant when we lost the baby. I can only imagine how much more intense those feelings would be if you were further along. I feel fairly certain that this is the most emotional I have ever been in my entire life. My grandmother also passed away a couple weeks later as well, which only fueled the emotional fire. It seems as if all I did for weeks was cry. I’m not looking for sympathy at all, but rather I hope to normalize talking about grief and loss. I also hope that my someone may be able to learn from my experience or know that they are not alone if they feel this way.
I took 3 days off from any sort of activity at all in the days immediately after. My first few runs back felt great! Like really, really amazing, especially compared to how I had felt the few weeks before (heavy and bloated). After a week or so of consistent, good runs, I all of a sudden started to feel horrible. There were several days where I had to take 5-6 walk breaks in a 5-6 mile run. It basically happened at least every other day, if not every day for about two weeks. To put it in perspective, when I got pregnant, I was consistently running 55-60 miles per week with a 10-12 mile long run as no big deal. Stopping to walk during a run is not something that I have ever had to do before, except for maybe in a really dire circumstance (i.e., a bathroom emergency!).
I really don’t know if anyone else has experienced anything like this or not, but it was so confusing to me. I was like, I’m not pregnant anymore, shouldn’t I feel perfectly fine? Apparently, it takes a little while for those hormones to level back out (for me it took a little bit over 6 weeks). I’m sure the excessive crying didn’t help at all either. I was probably at a very dehydrated state the majority of the time during those weeks. Throw the most stressful tax season of my career into that mix and I was a hot, hot mess.
I felt angry that running wasn’t there for me when I needed it and I felt angry that my body wasn’t a suitable home for a baby.
But of course, as things always do, the hardest times passed and things have gotten much better. In fact, I still remember the exact day that I started to feel “like myself” again. It was Saturday, April 17! I was planning to do 7 or 8 miles, but once I got going I actually felt good for the first time in about 7 weeks. Praise. The. Lord! In hindsight, I guess this really isn’t all that long, but in the middle of it, it felt like ages. I honestly didn’t know if I would ever be able to run like I “used to.” I’m sure that sounds really silly, but it was very real in the moment.
I have no idea what is next (no one really ever does), but I know that I am cautiously optimistic that it’ll be something really good! Thanks for reading. Talk to you guys again soon!
For those of you who are interested in the actual miles and hours breakdown, here you go:
Week 01 (01/04/21 to 01/10/21): 56.3 miles + 51.5 hours
Week 02 (01/11/21 to 01/17/21): 58.0 miles + 53.2 hours
Week 03 (01/18/21 to 01/24/21): 59.0 miles + 47.1 hours
Week 04 (01/25/21 to 01/31/21): 52.0 miles + 50.2 hours
Week 05 (02/01/21 to 02/07/21): 56.6 miles + 51.8 hours
Week 06 (02/08/21 to 02/14/21): 50.1 miles + 40.0 hours
Week 07 (02/15/21 to 02/21/21): 56.1 miles + 54.0 hours
Week 08 (02/22/21 to 02/28/21): 53.3 miles + 52.5 hours
Week 09 (03/01/21 to 03/07/21): 39.5 miles + 40.5 hours
Week 10 (03/08/21 to 03/14/21): 53.7 miles + 53.1 hours
Week 11 (03/15/21 to 03/21/21): 44.0 miles + 50.3 hours
Week 12 (03/22/21 to 03/28/21): 42.2 miles + 55.0 hours
Week 13 (03/29/21 to 04/04/21): 45.5 miles + 49.8 hours
Week 14 (04/05/21 to 04/11/21): 49.4 miles + 47.0 hours
Week 15 (04/12/21 to 04/18/21): 41.8 miles + 44.5 hours
Week 16 (04/19/21 to 04/25/21): 54.1 miles + 40.0 hours
Week 17 (04/26/21 to 05/02/21): 59.3 miles + 40.0 hours
Week 18 (05/03/21 to 05/09/21): 52.6 miles + 40.0 hours
Week 19 (05/10/21 to 05/16/21): 50.3 miles + 40.0 hours
Week 20 (05/17/21 to 05/23/21): 61.0 miles + 40.0 hours
Also for those that may be interested in an quality sessions (i.e., workouts), here you go:
Week 01 –
2 mi. WU, 2 mi. tempo (5:50, 5:15) + 3 X 2 min. (5:39, 5:28. 5:25), 2 mi. CD
Week 02 –
2 mi. WU, 3 X [3, 2, 1 min.), 2 mi. CD
2 mi. WU, 2 X 200 (38, 38), 4 X 400 (77, 77, 76, 77), 2 X 200 (38, 37), 5 mi. CD
Week 03 –
2 mi. WU, 3 mi. progressive tempo (6:06, 5:58, 5:50), 3 mi. CD
Week 04 –
3 mi. WU, 1.5 mi. tempo (5:49 pace), 3.5 mi. easy, 4 X 200 (38, 38, 37, 38), 3 mi. CD
Week 05 –
2 mi. WU, 6 mi. @ marathon-ish effort (6:40 avg.), 2 mi. CD
2 mi. WU, 2 X 800 (2:45, 2:42), 4 X 400 (78, 78, 79, 78), 8 X 200 (36, 37, 38, 37, 38, 37, 38, 37), 2 mi. CD
Week 06 –
3.5 mi. WU, 4 X 1 mile @ threshold (6:16, 6:00, 5:56, 6:09), 3.5 mi. CD
Week 07 – 08: ZERO workouts
Week 09 –
1.5 mi. WU, 2 X 1 mile (5:53, 5:52), 1.5 mi. CD
Week 10 –
2 mi. WU, 6 X 1:00 on/off, 6 X 0:30 on/off, 3 mi. CD
Week 11 – 16: ZERO workouts
Week 17 –
2 mi. WU, 4 mi. @ marathon-ish effort (6:58 avg.), 2 mi. CD
5 mi. WU, 6 X 400 (85, 85, 83, 84, 83, 82), 2 mi. CD
Week 18 – 20: ZERO workouts