Have I mentioned...

...that I'm signed up for a marathon on March 17th? This one: http://runrocknroll.competitor.com/usa/usa-splash.

I got peer pressured to sign up for this race through the power of Facebook. Way back in the fall, my high school friend Scott (the Ironman) signed up for this marathon, then posted about it on FB. In his post, he tagged a number of friends (including yours truly) who he thought might want to sign up. It worked; people started signing up almost immediately. Soon, a pattern emerged: all of the friends Scott recruited for the race were graduates of our high school from roughly the same time period. Within a couple of days, this race became much more than a race- it became our unofficial high school reunion! I couldn't pass up an opportunity like that.

This race has a half-marathon option (aka: the sensible choice). Why didn't I sign up for that? Its all a little fuzzy now, but I think I wanted to experiment with training for a spring marathon. I formulated a plan in my head that seemed simple: tack 7 extra miles onto the long runs of the Annapolis Striders' spring half-marathon training. I would achieve that by starting the weekly group long runs at my house, running to the meet-up point with my fellow trainees. Under that plan, I would have started with a 13-mile run on December 31st and culminated with a 19-mile run at the end of February (before tapering).

Unfortunately, my "simple" plan ran into some complications. Week 1 (12/31), I fell less than half a mile into my planned 13-mile run and hurt myself badly enough to need a few days off. The next week (1/7), I planned to ease back in with a 9.5-mile run. Then, I came down with a cold which cancelled that run too. The following week (1/14), I finally made it to the Striders' training, but I didn't feel comfortable attempting more than the scheduled 8 miles for that day. The week after that (1/21), our run got cancelled by an ice storm. I should have made up the mileage, but I didn't. This past Saturday (1/28), I intended to join the Striders for 10 miles. At about mile 4, I realized that I had dropped my Iphone at the mile 2.5 water stop. So, I ran back and (thankfully) found my phone. Then, instead of turning back around, I just ran to my car. By the end of the morning, I had 7 miles done and half-hearted plans to finish the additional 3 at the gym. Instead, I went home and took a nap.

These last couple of minor complications point to a major one: my heart just doesn't seem to be in this race. Maybe I have more energy in the summer. Maybe I'm too overwhelmed with all of the recent changes in my life. For whatever reason, I can't get myself to give this training the attention it needs. Fortunately, I have the option of down-grading to the half-marathon right up until the day of the race. But there's a complication with that plan too: I hate feeling like a quitter. Yes, I understand that nobody who runs 13.1 miles is a quitter. Still, you don't get into schools like Bryn Mawr and Yale by being an underachiever or just a regular achiever. My overachieving self has difficulty saying things like "I need to downgrade from the marathon to the half."

So, I'm giving myself the month of February to figure it out. I'll train as much and as well as I can in February. Then, if March 1 rolls around and I'm not where I need to be, I will silence by inner overachiever and "settle" for the half.