Sad Decision Day

Well this week marks the start of July, which means the Denver Marathon is only 3.5 months away. You may say, well that’s pretty far away…ha nope. If I started training next week, I’d only have about 14 weeks of training which would need to include a 3 week taper. That means I‘d only have 11 weeks to get myself back up to 20 mile runs. That’s just 2.5 months to get from zero to 20 without injury. Even though I've been cross-training my butt off, it just seems like I'd be asking for injury.

As much as I’m desperate to train for the full marathon, I’ve come to the decision to drop from the full to the half marathon. I’ve been going over all of this in my head, on paper, trying to figure out training plans that would get me prepared enough to run a strong race, not a fast one, but a strong one. It’s just not in the cards for me. If I were up and running even just 10 miles a week right now I’d just go for it. Maybe only do one 20 miler. But without the base, I’m not going to risk injuring myself even more.

I HATE giving up which is what I feel like I’m doing. I’m trying to remind myself that I need to listen to my body and my body is telling me that I am not ready to jump into training for a full. It's not my fault mother nature robbed me of my full marathon for the year and left me injured. My plan now is to train for a fast half marathon with the goal of setting a PR. After all, a half marathon is better than no race at all. Maybe I’ll even find a winter marathon to run in November or December. That will give me more time to prepare. I’m beyond frustrated but know that you can’t make your body do something that it’s not ready to do. It’s not like there won’t be other marathons in the future right?