7 More Days

My next marathon is in 7 days. Am I ready? I guess so. Am I worried? HELL YES!!!

My goal is to finish, and to finish I must "Beat the Bridge", which is at mile 21. I have to make it there in 5 hours. I might be able to do it. I can do 21 miles in 6 hours with an hour of bathroom breaks, conversation breaks, water stop/chatting breaks. 5 hours will be pushing it, but I am going to try!!! Running this marathon has been a goal of mine since last December, and while it's been on the backburner when school started, I still want to finish it. I'm running it to one-up someone, and the next time I see that person (which will be a week later), I'm going to wear the medal and show him the pictures. Hee hee.

After next Sunday, I might take a break from marathon running. I want to enjoy running again, and I want to not train for something. Although I won't be training, I'm still going to do Saturday long runs of 13 miles (in case I want to sign up for a random half marathon, because 14 miles isn't bad at all). With the not training, I can focus on speed training and just enjoying myself without watching a stopwatch. So I'm not going to do New Orleans. It's too much. If they have a half, I'll do the half. Plus I'm doing the Houston half. My next marathon... who knows. I'll do at least one next year. Christine just finished the Nike Women's marathon (go Christine!) and she wants me to do that one with her next year. With the medal being a Tiffany's necklace... I just might! :)

I've been thinking a lot this past weekend, as well as listening. I had dinner with Yvonne and Stephen last night. They are the cutest couple and they're waist-deep in their wedding plans. Yvonne tells me that I need to get married soon, because she wants us to be soccer moms together (actually, she's been getting on my case for about a year now). That got me thinking. What if I don't get married? Will I be ok with that? I think I will. I think marriage is scaring me and I didn't want to admit it until recently. There are so many things I want to do, and I don't know how a marriage will work into that. For example, I want to live in NYC. And I want to live in London (getting my masters or PhD at a university in England). I want to live in either NYC, DC, London or San Diego for the long run, but who knows when that will be? And will someone want to move around for me? I wouldn't want to.

There's a lot to be said about acceptance.