New Year, New Half!

Second half marathon is on the books! Finally made a decision about which one I would run - the second I made that decision, I registered and put it on the calendar. It'll be my first half of 2012!

I was thinking about running the Country Music Half in late April in Nashville. I signed up the girls to run the Kid's Marathon, but couldn't quite bring myself to register for me. Something was holding me back, and everytime I thought about it, I felt a sense of dread. There were several bad reviews I read about the race, but for every bad review, there were three good reviews....still, couldn't register. I was hoping also that if I went to Nashville to run it, some of my old neighbors would run it as well, but I soon learned that the ones that had run it before decided not to do it again because they weren't crazy about the course.

The other day, one of those old neighbors, a very serious runner, mentioned he would be up here in Indiana to run a marathon or half marathon in April. I assumed it would be the Indy 500 race he was talking about. People say it is a lot of fun, but it's also one of the largest half marathons in the country, drawing in 50,000+ runners. I'm not ready for that many people yet - sounds too chaotic. But, I assumed wrong. My friend was talking about the Carmel Marathon & Half Marathon...hello! I live in Carmel! Well...not really. I live across the street from Carmel, but have a Carmel address. Anyhoo...how did I not know of this race? It just started last year, with only 1100 half runners, and 580 marathon runners. That is more my speed. I'm sure it'll be bigger this year, but I can't imagine it'll be that huge yet. I drove the first 7.5 miles of the course the other day, and it IS hilly, but I'm not going to let that stop me. This race does get me excited, and I'm looking forward to training again. I've been running 3x a week still, but my long runs have only been 6 miles, and this Saturday was the first time in weeks I threw some hills in my route.

My next decision to make is whether or not to join a nearby running group to train for this race. There are two reasons I would join: to meet other runners (it's been so hard meeting people here - I like to run alone, but I'm willing to try a group), and because it's going to be hard motivating myself to run in the upcoming harsh winter weather. I took up running last winter, but winters in TN are mild - still cold, but the snow is minimal. It's going to be brutal cold here and much more snow. Ugh. I'm heading to the sports store this morning to buy a warm base layer top, and maybe some wind pants to go over my tights. Cha-ching. Oh - and it costs to join the running group. Cha-ching, cha-ching. I'll think about it...

Now comes the hard part - trying to stay fit with all this amazing holiday food always around!