A Change of Course

The 10k went fine on Saturday. Pretty much what I expected, no better, no worse. Official time of 50:27. Finished 18 of 66. A friend of mine asked me about it later in the day and after giving him the 10-second summary he mentioned that he was going to run a half-marathon in October and tried to convince me to run it with him. My initial reaction wasn't a yes or a no, but I told him I'd look at it online and get back to him.

Well, I found it online. And it's not in October. It's September 19th. Five weeks from yesterday. Initially my though was a 100% definitely not. But then I started thinking about it more and more. By the time my friend and his wife stopped by to pick up their kids, I agreed to run the Champoeg Half-Marathon with him. September 19th. Five weeks from yesterday. Here was my thought process from No to Yes in nutshell:

1. The Monmouth/Independence 2.6 mile mini-marathon on July 4th, the 5k at Bush Park and the 10k this weekend didn't phase me at all. I knew if I put a little bit of time and effort it I could show up and finish just fine. There was another 10k I was going to run September 19th, but the more I thought about it, the more I felt like I needed to do something more difficult. Something that would really stretch me. The half-marathon in five weeks intimidates me, to be completely honest. The 10k does not. All the more reason to do the half-marathon.

2. The way my schedule sets up the next few weeks it may actually be the best time to do it. I don't start teaching my early morning class until mid-way through week 4 (of 5), and I'll have those two or three lessons prepared ahead of time. Week 5 I'll be tapering off on my mileage and my wife and kids will be visiting Grandma in Las Vegas, so I'll be able to go run whenever I need to during the day.

3. As mentioned previously, I'm not doing this for regular exercise. I'm doing this to achieve a goal. Right now I'm excited about running and feel good about doing so. I should take advantage of that and get all that I can out of it right now.

So September 19th it is.