Marathon #2 -- Wait, WHAT?

So, after spending what really amounts to YEARS preparing myself, physically and mentally, to run the New York City Marathon, I find myself a few days away from running my second marathon…. Just over three months after my first, this one in Austin, Texas. I feel, in equal measures, totally prepared and utterly panicked. I think it’s the fact that I feel prepared that that is causing me to panic.

For all the time I spent worrying about, focusing on and obsessing over my prep for NYC, physically I KNOW I’ve done the work this time. I may or may not beat my time from NYC. I’m pretty sure I’ll come in close to it. Ultimately, I’m okay with whatever happens. This is really more about maintaining the fitness I built up in the fall, preparing to launch into a full-on BQ assault in the spring, and most importantly of all having a goddam good time.

I’ll be traveling to a place I’ve never been, meeting people I’ve never met and having an amazing experience. I really couldn’t be more excited for this.

There is a level of anxiety, being that I will be 1,800 miles from home, have only done this once before and don’t really know the topography of the land I’ll be running in at all (but my quads have been warned to prepare for some hills). The field of runners for this event is about a tenth the size of New York, so I’m sure the crowds along the streets won’t be as raucous. I’m a little anxious about that, as well, because I really think the crowds helped me a lot in NYC. I do know I’ll have friends along the course, old friends who used to live in New York but moved back to Texas. I’m so excited to be seeing them.

No matter what, I’m sure I’ m going to have fun and really that’s what this is about. At the end of the day, if I can say I had fun then I totally won the race.



Oh yeah, and...