It's That Time of Year Again

Goal setting. Race schedules. Fa la freakin' la.

This is the time of year I cave to the 4:30 darkness and get sad and wallow in self-pity about how slow my progress has been considering I've been at this whole weight loss and exercise thing for 3 years now.

This is the time I year alternate that with yelling at myself about how I need to get over myself because I'm doing great - I've lost 50 pounds, I made huge progress in my swim, I learned to run for goodness' sake - while stuffing myself with homemade dressing instead of the turkey.

This is the time of year I do things like adopt 85 pound untrained puppies and act like it has nothing to do with still being childless.

This is the time of year I realize I'm THAT MUCH CLOSER TO 35. My scary age. The age before which I had decided I would be done having children. The age at which I promised myself I'd run a marathon. The age at which I theorized I might tackle my first half-Ironman. The age that is ONLY A YEAR AND 6 WEEKS AWAY with none of those goals feeling any closer.

So. Yeah. Been doin' some math.

My birthday is at the end of the year, and even though I weasel-worded the terms of my marathon goal to buy an entire year ("WHEN" I'm 35 vs "BEFORE" I'm 35) the voices in my head are still freaking out.

BUT.

This year there's a new voice in my head - one that I can't seem to drown with gravy. She has been helpfully pointing out in a nauseatingly cheerful way that I've come an awfully long way and I'll be disappointed if I don't push myself harder next season.

So I took the aggressive stance that I would do an Oly next year. (OK, maybe it's just aggressive to me. I have a feeling it's more of a "DUH!!" from the outside looking in.)

Then I started playing with the schedule and it hit me hard that in order to meet my marathon goal I really should put a half-marathon into my 2007 race plan. Which means I really should put a 10K in the plan for early in the season - which I should really do anyway to help prepare myself for my first Oly. And call me an incrementalist if you must, but I figure if I'm really gonna run that half-mary late in the season I should probably stick a 15K in the middle somewhere.

And well, this "haven't even done a 5K yet" girl is feeling more than a little bit freaked out about that.

'Cause ya see.... that's a LOT of Ks.

I think I can do it. Hope so, because I'm not the sort to back down from a challenge. I'm already weasel-wording my half-mary plan with terms like "finish" instead of "run"... but considering I'll still be dragging around at least 75 extra pounds (and that's being very, very generous about what I might be able to lose in the next 10 months) I'm not going to set any crazy expectations about running the whole thing. If I do, GREAT. But this is hard enough without setting myself up for failure.

So. It's that time of year again. I pick races. I get freaked out. I sign up for them anyway. There's just a whole new level of freak-out going on because I'm contemplating a whole new level of scariness.

Unlike 2006, I'm not just trying to improve my sprint time in 2007. I'm trying to simultaneously meet my holy grail sub-2 sprint goal while moving up to Oly distance and adding distance running in a serious way. Just contemplating the idea of me and those races in the same context at this point is pushing my rational mind a bit far.

Guess it's a good thing I'm a little bit nuts.