To Blog or Not to Blog

I need an outlet for my constant, almost obsessive, focus on running, so getting back to keeping a running diary here at Blogspot might be a good idea. I can pretend like I have an audience and spout off on whatever happens to be on my mind, but the primary thing, I think, is just keeping a narrative of my training runs for later reference. I'm not doing that now and there are times when I'd like to go back and review what I was thinking or feeling at various stages of training and conditioning.

I've pretty much decided -- just today, in fact -- to abandon my notion of running a February marathon. Money is tight, for one thing. But Surf City is 16 weeks away from this weekend, and I still have 3 weeks to go until the Silver Strand half marathon. I don't want to start shifting to the marathon training schedule right when I'm putting the final touches on my half marathon object with the taper coming soon.

That means the marathon training will be compressed even further. I don't want to ante up $120 just to finish another marathon. I want to perform and strive for an improvement. So I'm going to spend the end of 2011 continuing to establish my foundation and gear myself toward a second assault on the San Diego Rock'n'Roll marathon in June.

I also have a mind to try to do the Marine Corps marathon in October 2012, so that's two marathons during the calendar year right there. I question the wisdom of me trying to wedge in a 3rd marathon at this point in my late running career.

So that's that. No January/February marathon. If I can, I'll still do the Carlsbad half on 22 Jan. And some other odds and ends, like the Race on the Base triathlon in February and the Carlsbad 5000 in April.

I turn 51 in a few weeks. Wonder if I should bother to switch to a new, fresh blog, since I will have "run to 51" soon. ???