Logic trumps!

It's been just a couple of three weeks since the Old Hickory Lake Triathlon here in my hometown of Hendersonville, TN. I spent the next five-seven days after recovering and nursing my bad back. Just this week I started, in earnest, to train for the Marathon in Memphis on December 6th!

Today I ran 13.1 miles, purely coincidental that this happens to be the exact distance of a half-marathon. The time, although not important at this point was 2 hours, 20 minutes and change. I was happy with this, although my knees, ankles and lower back were letting me know that this was just enough.

I have been trying to logically decide and to convince myself that it's time to give the full marathon (26.2 miles!) a whirl. It's something I truly want to do, I guess just to be able to say that I have, for there really is no other reason for this.

But, on this beautiful September morning, as I am making my way through the streets of Hendersonville, I am really and truly enjoying the work. I am not really worried about how far or how fast I'm going, I'm just paying attention to my body and what it's trying to tell me. Somewhere about an hour and a half after I started I'm still feeling really good. I know I can last at least another hour, more or less.

I take a small break to refill my water bottle and to take a second shot of GU jell. I make my way down the straight and long Gallatin Rd., on the way back home. At this point I begin to take a mental inventory of each and every joint that would hurt and I realize that each and everyone is beginning to ache. My right knee buckled at one point and I had to slow down to let it recover a bit. As I look at my gps, I see that I'm on mile ten and still have about three to make it to the house. This last stretch I was being very careful not to do anything silly that would compromise the health of my bones. And then I began to think..."if i were running a full marathon, I wouldn't even be halfway through. There's no way I could make it to the end without doing serious damage."

I took this opportunity to analyze why I was doing this, what would happen to my goals and intentions if I pushed it further. I have nothing to prove to anyone, except myself... and the only thing I have to prove to myself is that I should be able to continue to do what I've set out to do from the beginning, and that is to have fun while continuing to improve my physical condition and mental attitude.

I have been running for a couple of years and so far I have enjoyed every single mile. I cant recall at any point ever wondering why I am doing this, in a negative manner. This summer I tackled the world of triathlons and thoroughly enjoyed it because it provided the extra challenge I was looking for.

And so the decision was made. I would, at least for the time being, forego the idea of running a full marathon. I dont think that I would be happy putting myself in a situation where I begin to wonder why I did something like this! I will, however, leave the door open to revisit this idea in the future.

Logic trumps! If I run a full marathon, I could really do something to my back that would at the very least, sideline me for months and the the worst, sideline me forever. Additionally, the idea of putting myself in a situation of ever wishing, even for a step, that I wish I hadn't done this, is not something I want to do. I know what it takes and what I need to complete a half, this I can live with.

So, for now, I will stick to my schedule of half marathons; the Memphis St Jude's Half, the Gasparilla Half in Tampa and the Music City Half in Nashville