Two is better than one? Guess we’ll find out…
Early registrations can be a dangerous thing.
Back in January, in the heart of the offseason, registration for the Air Force Marathon weekend opened. They offer a pretty significant discount if you register on 1 January, the first day it’s available, and I wanted to take advantage, so I registered that day for the 5k and the half marathon.
Why two races, you ask? Well, let me tell you about January. In January, I was invincible. I hadn’t run a step in a month, I was eating as I pleased and lifting whenever I wanted, and was seeing substantial gains in the weight room. I was in that utopian limbo where nothing hurt from last season any more, and the real work of the next season hadn’t yet started. The sky was the limit, as far as my ambition was concerned, and so long as I kept working at it, there was positively no reason I couldn’t run a 5k on a Friday night, and then turn around and run a half marathon the next morning!
That was January, and this is September, and now I am not so sure this was a great idea. A long, hard season of running, riding, racing and crashing has left me a little battered and bruised. My joints are complaining at the constant demand with increasing volume and frequency, and I’m developing a very familiar relationship with my bottle of Advil.
Still, there’s not much I can do about it. I signed up for both races to prove that I could do it, and now it’s time to find out if I really can. And I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t feel just a little bit like a badass, picking up two different bibs at the Expo this afternoon. Ask me Saturday at lunch if I still feel the same.
It’s sort of a big event.