Why I don't believe in goals

Do you know what tomorrow is? LOL. If you've been around these parts at ALL in the past few weeks, then you know that tomorrow is my 3rd marathon and 1st in 10 years.

I'm beyond excited. Obviously.
Even despite the nasty cold spell that has descended upon the race course.

When I started training, I set a goal to run a sub-4:30 marathon, but about 7 weeks into training, I decided to scrap that idea.

Training had already started to be tedious, and that just wasn't any fun. I'm not ashamed to admit that I run for fun! I'd wanted to run at a 10:00 min/mi, but too many of my training runs had fallen closer to 11:00 min/mi paces. I was starting to stress out about that, and I didn't want to spend the rest of my training with that kind of pressure.

Instead I choose to run by feel.

Some runs are faster and some are slower, but as my blog name suggests, I prefer to just be out there enjoying the course.

So, I don't set race goals. Unless you count having fun a goal, but I prefer to think of it as a state of mind. :-)

My hope for tomorrow is simply to have fun, stay warm, and finish.

Even though I don't have a race goal time, I know that Katie was hoping to get a sub-5:00 at Chicago, but ended up having some issues and didn't run the race she'd hoped for.

I do think we have a pretty good chance of getting her a sub-5:00 this time around for 2 reasons.

1) It's fricken cold outside. Nothing like 20-degree to put a little pep in your step.
2) It's a mostly downhill course. Not the kind the kills your knees, just the kind that doesn't kill your lungs.

But even if we don't. We're going to HAVE FUN!

And, though my training wasn't all I'd hoped it would be, I know I'm ready enough.

Anyone else racing in the cold this weekend?
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