(Re)Committed

I mailed my recommitment paperwork Saturday – there is no turning back now. But there never was. Barring a major injury or other such catastrophe, from the moment I filed the paperwork to join the team last fall, I knew I would be recommitting.

I finally figured out my half-marathon vs. full-marathon conundrum. Some weeks back, my sister had asked if I could do ¾ of a marathon. “Only if I drop dead at about 19 miles, which is about the point when that is starting to sound like a pretty good idea,” I said. Of course, there is no ¾ check box on the recommitment form. So a half-marathon it is, and I am going to try to focus on just enjoying the half-marathon experience and not stress over whether I should have done the full 26.2 for the fourth time. The decision is made!

A tougher item for me what the “Runner or walker – check only one” boxes. What am I this time around? I am now running at least 60% of my miles, maybe even 65%. By the time of the event, I hope to be running about 80% if I can continue to shorten my walk duration. I was tempted to check both boxes, but figured maybe I would be scrubbed from the race for inability to follow instructions. “This nut-case can’t follow a simple ‘check one box’ instruction! How can we expect him to be able to follow the race course?” In the end, I checked the “runner” box, figuring that I would be doing more running than walking if all goes well. As I wrote last week, I am going to try to walk all the miles for one training day a week so I can try to maintain my typical fast and strong walking pace.

It feels great to have recommitted to my fourth team and my fourth Team in Training event, and also my fourth one as a cancer survivor. I hope that there will be many more!