Still feeling sore after this week’s fall. Unless there’s a bit of magic in store for me here (he says, watching icy snow fall out of the sky) I think I’m missing this weekend’s long run. Which upends my training cycle once again and so at this point this entire affair has been such a comedic mess that I think I’m ready to toss it in the trash and move on.

Which is fine! I’m actually not mad. I kind of knew going into it that getting prepped for a spring full was going to be a stretch anyway, and I’ve had “just do the half marathon instead, dummy” as my back-up plan since day one, and I’ve got plenty of time left here to reset, recenter, and refocus on that as my goal, so…I think I’m going to do that, with an eye toward some kind of fun spring half goal that preps me to segue smoothly into summer training for a fall marathon.

To be perfectly honest this probably makes more sense for me anyway. As much as I want to keep going through the winter, I really don’t want to stop running for like three months every year, I know what a mess it can be, even when it’s going well, and this last month has maybe felt more stress-inducing than stress-relieving, and so maybe just adjusting my expectations going into the winter season is the right move anyway. Seems like a perfectly reasonable time to just do less and worry less about it for a while, and maybe actually figure out a treadmill situation ahead of time for next year to make life even easier next time around, theoretically.

For as much as I know summer comes with its own trials and tribulations I sincerely believe I had much more fun training through the heat than I have through the cold and at the end of the day (or, well, beginning of the day, as I wake up before everyone else to get these runs in) this whole thing is supposed to be fun, darn it.