It was really all Tom King's fault. I was progressing nicely in my overall marathon training, then around mile 12 of his half-marathon several weeks ago I did something to my left calf. I don't know if it was a sprain or a pull or whatever, I just know there was a lot of bright and amazing pain, and it was a few days before I could really walk again.
This caused me to miss a couple of weeks of training, and when I did start back again, I found I had lost the heart for it. Several times when I should have been running I did something else instead. The few times I did a long distance run/walk I had more leg pain, discomfort, and general thoughts of death (see prior post).
This caused a lot of indecision about what to do with the marathon, and I was indecisive right on through the online-registration cutoff for the Music City. When I missed the deadline the decision was made to just skip everything and sleep in. Sleeping in is never a bad call.
However, this decision did nothing for my overall indecision. I had trained, I just couldn't do nothing. So I decided that if I went to the pre-marathon expo and there were still slots open for the half-marathon, then that is what I would do. This made the sleep-in contingent happy, since most of the time the half-marathon, which is capped somewhere between 18 to 19,000 runners, is usually closed by expo time.
So Friday morning, the day before the race, I made it to the expo to find out that yes, the half-marathon was still open. More indecision. Sleeping in was making quite a case for itself. What idiot gets up at 6 in the morning to run around town when there are hours of sleep yet to be had? Surprisingly, there was still a part of me who wanted to try the full marathon, just to say that I completed one. However, the risks of permanently disability and death and the thought of some office worker coming across my corpse in Metrocenter on Monday morning put that idea down. In the end the half-marathon won out. I knew I could do it relatively easily, and it got bonus points for me being able to be back in bed by 9:30 to 10.
It was a good decision. I ended up completing the thing in almost exactly 2 hours, maybe a minute more. Not my best time, but not bad either given the half-hearted training schedule. The nap afterward was fantastic as well.
For a call weekend, last weekend was unusually good. Especially Sunday, which was a fantastic day. The good times lasted right on into Monday, which, being a post-call day, automatically sent it half-way to greatness. I had planned to do a Big Run on Monday in preparation for the upcoming marathon, but the weather was too darn perfect. So instead I headed out to Beaman Park, which is up in the hills in far northwestern Davidson County. This is a beautiful park-Warner without the crowds. It is very quiet and peaceful; it is like you are a hundred miles from the big city.