Saturday, December 11, 2010

December 10: Wisdom

I'm participating in #reverb10, a month-long challenge to blog every day of December based on prompts provided here.

Wisdom Wisdom. What was the wisest decision you made this year, and how did it play out? (Author: Susannah Conway)

One of the wisest decisions I made this year was to not run the Chicago marathon. When registration for the raced opened in January for the race, I knew I needed to register immediately to guarantee myself a spot (even though the marathon isn't until October, it sells out pretty fast).

I've run three marathons in the past six years. I've told myself I'll stop once I make it to Boston, a marathon so popular and prestigious that all runners must qualify at a previous marathon. In other words, you have to run two marathons to run Boston.

Like I said, I've run three, and I'm ready to get this Boston race under my belt. So if I were to have run the Chicago marathon, I would have tried to qualify. Which means I would have had to cut off 20 minutes from my best time — entirely doable with a lot of hard work, running a gazillion miles, healthy eating and absolutely no alcohol for 4 months.

I'm going to do it someday. Maybe next year. But this year wasn't the year for me. The bulk of my training would have been over the summer, and I ultimately decided it wasn't worth forfeiting my first real summer in the city for a race I have my whole life to run.

So I didn't enter. And this was wise. Because I had a great summer. The kind of summer that 145 percent reinforced my decision to live my 20s in Chicago. A summer of late nights and drinking and not exercising much and music festivals and general all around fun; a million things I would not have experienced had I been staying in every Friday to wake up early to run 20 miles the next day.

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