Dropping out of taper

And, accordingly, the Bellingham Bay Marathon on Sunday. After much deliberation and mental processing, I finally reached the obvious conclusion that it is just not practical or even possible to spend eight or more hours on Sunday driving to and from Bellingham and running, just days after Rod will be discharged from the hospital from yesterday's hip surgery. Yes, I know, a smarter person would have figured this out a lot sooner!

But, in small defense of myself, I have been planning to run this marathon for almost a year and training for it all summer. Separating myself from it, especially since they don't even allow deferrals, required a little bit of effort.

So here I am, all trained up and nowhere to go. My new plan, reluctantly determined, is to run the Seattle Marathon on the Sunday after Thanksgiving instead. That means two more months of marathon training when I thought I was going to be done (and back to half marathon distance) in five days! I just can't find any other marathon accessible to me before then that would not require too much travel and expense. Weeks ago I checked into whether I could trade up to the full (from the half) in Portland on 10/10/10, but they are sold out and are not allowing any changes.*

The idea of continuing in full-on long distance training for another two months took almost as much processing as the concept of dropping out of Bellingham. But now I am just a tiny bit excited about coming up with a training plan for the next few weeks. I am figuring on three more 20+ mile runs, one this weekend, ** and the others probably on October 16-17 and November 13-14, or thereabouts anyway. There is planning to be done!

And just think of all the possibilities. More Yasso 800s! Reintroduce hill work! Ice baths galore as winter rolls in! I can hardly wait!


*I could buy a charity entry for $500, but I think not.
**By doing this locally, I can check on Rod every hour or two.