A Contingency Plan

After six months to chew on it, I am feeling ready to commit to running a marathon this year.  I tend to be slow when making big decisions, and running a marathon is HUGE DECISION for me!  Marathon training won’t start officially until May, when I begin my five-month training plan.  Before May, I have a half-marathon in the beginning of March and some in-between time to get some solid, regular running done without the stress or intensity of long runs.  Between March and May, my training plan says I should be comfortable running 30 minutes four times a week.  I’m feeling a bit funny about the “four times a week” part because I tend to fall into a pattern of three runs per week with lots of cross-training in the form of biking.  So I don’t know: does it REALLY matter if I run three or four times a week if I’m doing some complementary cardio?  What do you think?

I am also a bit worried about getting into the Chicago Marathon.  Does it ever sell out?  I don’t know, and I’m feeling too lazy to Google it, so I’m just making a contingency plan.  In the event that I don’t get into Chicago when it opens on February 19, I am going to run the hometown marathon here in College Station on December 8.  I’m happy with either plan, though of course I really want to make it to Chicago to meet some of you for marathon weekend!  But Plan B has some benefits too: it’s local (and thus way less expensive) and the timing means that I would be doing my longest runs during slightly cooler weather.  So we’ll see what happens.  I will keep you posted!

Until then, it’s full speed ahead with half-marathon boot camp in which I attempt to go from 6-mile long runs to a strong half-marathon performance in two months.  Yeehaw!