Half marathon it is, then

I've been going back and forth about whether or not I should be doing this full marathon in Columbus.  Yeah, it seemed like a great idea and I had all these romanticized ideas about long runs and all that jazz, but the reality is that it's been freaking hard to get the runs in, and more have been bad than not.  So I raised the question with Haakan, all teary eyed and full of anxiety, and we decided it probably wasn't a bad idea to scale back.  I was supposed to do 14 miles as my long run this past week, so we decided I'd still do that.

Disaster is a good word to use when I describe the 14 miler, which ended up being a 12 miler.  The first few miles were ok, it was hotter than Hades out there, but I was holding my own (went out around 5pm, after a particularly bad night with Charlie kept me from going out early in the morning like I had planned).  I was ready to throw in the towel around mile 7, but I dutifully took my gel and soldiered on.  I kept telling myself, if I've made it to 7 miles, I can just as well do 10, and then I'll reevaluate.  I got to 10 miles and though, I've gotten this far, I'll finish 12 miles and then decide if I can do the last 2.  Miles 10 and 11 were rough, and when I stopped to use the porta potties and almost passed out, I decided that I probably should concede defeat and head for home after 12 miles.  And I barely made it home.  I was a shakey, sick, low blood sugar mess by the time I got home, and I had to ask Haakan to make me a hotdog because I couldn't stand up long enough to do it myself without getting nauseatingly dizzy.  Very unpleasant.  I had this happen with a 10 miler and I *thought* I had fueled appropriately throughout the day, but apparently not.  It's just proving very difficult to eat enough while I'm breastfeeding to have enough to pull it out for these long runs.

So it looks like I'm either going to do the half marathon in Columbus, or else just defer on the full until next year.  I'm doing the Ikea Half Marathon about a month before Columbus, and I'm not sure it's worth it to drag the whole family to Columbus, get a hotel, etc etc, just for a half marathon.  And at the same time, I can't really go alone because Charlie will be so little still.  We're still working out the details, so it's up in the air, but as of now, I'll try for the full marathon in Pittsburgh in May of 2011.

I feel kind of like a weight has been lifted since we've decided to bag the full marathon in October.  I feel like I've been getting slower and slower, which is the opposite of how I should be feeling.  Maybe I can concentrate on getting faster for some races and such and can definitely have a more positive marathon experience in May than I probably would have had in Columbus in October.  Yeah, I feel like a little bit of a loser, but this is supposed to be fun and it was feeling like more of a job than it should.  I have enough not fun things that I have to do throughout the day, the thing I do for myself shouldn't be one of those things I *have* to do, it should be something I *want* to do.  So hopefully I can get back on the wagon the right way and this blog can stop being so damn depressing and whiny!