Making the Tough Choices

The time has come to make some tough running choices.

I am scheduled to run the Rock n' Roll Half Marathon on December 7, 2014 in San Antonio, TX.  I was on schedule training wise until today's run which I cut short.  I was slated to run 14 miles today but only managed about 11.25 miles.  One short long run isn't enough to derail a marathon training plan and I know I could get right back on track in 2 weeks with a 17 miler scheduled if it wasn't for this pesky thing called Plantar Fasciitis.

I've been fighting Plantar Fasciitis since June when I ran a few too many miles on shot shoes.  I took a couple weeks off in June/July where I did a lot of pool time cross training to keep my fitness level up so I could give it a chance to heal.  It was feeling much better when I started back to running and I cut out speed work and reduced my max distance some to help me get to the marathon.

Unfortunately the more I run, the worse it seems to be getting.

The way I see it I have 2 options
1) Keep pressing forward towards the marathon and likely cause some permanent damage that will take surgery or a lot of time off running to fix or
2) take a month off - hit the pool - rehab my foot and drop from the marathon to the half marathon in December.  This would give me the opportunity to focus on the Glass Slipper Challenge at Disney World in February and the Pixie Dust Challenge at Disneyland in May.

It's a very hard decision for me to make.  I'm very pigheaded and have been known to run races and training runs when I shouldn't have.  My last marathon in 2007 was a rough race.  I had a stomach bug in the hours before the race and I really struggled with that race.  It was through shear determination and pig-headedness that I finished that race more than an hour off my goal time.  I have needed to run one more marathon to get the taste of that race out of my mouth.  I know if I keep pushing now this race has the opportunity to be even worse than NYC in 2007.

I'm not 100% sold on dropping back to the half but after weighing all my options today I am about 95% certain I am going to change my race distance and live to run another day. . There will be more marathons and Disney in 2016 is calling my name.  Maybe I will wake up in the morning and all the pain will have disappeared and I will change my mind, but I doubt that is the case.

So until then I will be logging a lot of laps at the local YMCA swimming pool.