no turning back

I know I'm a few days late in posting this, but I've just gone through a crisis of faith and made a major decision. Early this week I was all set to pack it in and admit I didn't have the physical or mental preparedness to accomplish the Ottawa Marathon in a month. I was going to downgrade my participation to running in the half marathon. I had even crafted a message I was going to send to my database explaining the reasons for my change of heart, all of which were logical and made perfect sense.

But something held me back from going public with this communication, In fact, two days later I went out and ran 16.7K in under two hours, then went spinning for 45 minutes. And amazingly, after all this exercise I still felt strong and positive. I took some time (in the hot tub no less) to review and assess my position. I have been training non-stop for six months. I have been doing up to three hours of exercise daily in running-related activities. I am in peak physical condition (well for me anyway :)). I had just proved to myself that I could run a long distance and still have more juice in the tank. And bottom line, I want to run and finish this race, and I decided think I can.

So yesterday morning at 7 am I registered for the Ottawa Marathon on May 27th. I start out at 7 am. I'm going to attempt to finish in 4 1/2 to 5 hours. I'm meeting with my coach on Monday to review the training over these next weeks (my God, I only have 29 days left!) to make sure I'm ready for this challenge. By the way, I'm wondering how he's going to react when I tell him, unless he reads this first.

Yes, I'm probably insane for attempting this but, what the heck, you only live once. And, worse case scenario, I'll chalk this up as my fourth attept to run a marathon.,But I won't have the regret that maybe, just maybe, I could have done it when I was 58 years old. Now what a feat that would be.

until next week,

Michael