Halving Marathons

Time moves more slowly for some. For me, it's time to go public on my New Year's resolutions. I have noticed it's February, but I figured it was time set my running goals on blog.

I'm not running any marathons this year.

I loved training and running the NYC marathon last year. I loved the excitement of having such a big project ahead of me and I loved giving Hal Higdon a run of my schedule. I basked in the sweet tyranny of early mornings and enforced soberness combined with the weekend night camaraderie of twit-runners preparing for long runs.

And the long runs! On Friday nights I had a standing date with myself at my favorite restaurant to carb up. It freed me from social commitments and it gave me an excuse a reason for a quiet evening with great food and a good book. The long runs gave me views of New York and of myself I'd never seen and it was intoxicating. Running from Brooklyn to Manhattan and back to Brooklyn I felt strong. I felt I could do anything.

Which is why I'm taking that I-can-do-anything feeling and applying it elsewhere.

I'm still going to run, but I want to apply elsewhere the focus and determination required for training for a marathon. I want to put that focus back into my writing.

So this year instead of running marathons, I'll run half-marathons. Five of them. One in each borough. Plus Ragnar, of course. The gang is getting back together and going Woodstalking.

One half-marathon down: Manhattan. It was fourteen degrees. The windchill was four degrees and it was sunny with a chance of awesomeness. With spotty winter training slowed down by a lung that's giving me trouble, I had no idea what to expect of this half. My longest run in a while had been my easy five-ish miler on my birthday and though I'd been running five miles regularly, I'd gone on no long runs for this.

It was fine. It was better than fine. It was so much fun I might even write a race report.