the power of suggestion

Apparently I'm easily swayed by the power of suggestion.  Who am I kidding?  I'm totally motivated by the thought of another medal with the added bonus of more race experience before my big day.  Funny how my big day used to be a half marathon and now that's small potatoes compared to my BIG DAY full marathon.  This, however, makes me remember how I have a BAD habit of not giving certain things in my life their proper respect.  A half marathon is a HUGE deal.  Two half marathons is a year is fantastic.  What do we think about three?  Yes, that's what I'm talking about here.  My friend Melissa forwarded me an email today about Houston's first all-girl only (no boy's allowed) half mary happening on December 12, 2010 - RunGirl 13.1.  Of course, my initial thought was that there is no way I can do this because of my training schedule with my running group.  My second thought was to look at my calendar and see what my scheduled mileage is on December 11th.  I'm thankful for second thoughts because I discovered it's a "recovery" week and we are only slated to do 14 miles.  Ha!  For the record, after I just typed that I laughed because of the word only.  There is something wrong with looking at 14 miles and thinking of it as only, but considering that the next weekend is a 22 miler, I'm sure you are on the same page with me that 14 miles sounds like a walk in the park in comparison!

I started getting that same feeling - excitement, adrenaline, a little bit of anxiety all mixed together - that I got when I first thought about signing up for my Chicago Rock 'n' Roll half.  I knew this meant one thing....JUST TO IT!  I went ahead and signed up.

So, yeah....the girl who just started running in January...who did her first 5K on January 31st, will be running her 3rd half marathon on December 12, 2010.

The cool thing is that there are 7 weeks from The Houston Half to RunGirl 13.1.  That means 7 whole weeks to track my progress and to strive for improvement.  Then, there are 7 more weeks from RunGirl 13.1 to the Chevron Houston Marathon.    This is just enough time to get my head in the right place, work some more mileage, stabilize my pace, and hydrate!

What's your next race?