Nervous

Now that I'm sitting here thinking about running, and about my goals, I'm getting nervous. WTF? Well, I know WTF - it's that whole fear of failure thing. Agh.

I have a 10k coming up on 11 October, same course I ran 45:10 on last year, and I reallllly want to get 44:xx. This is because at the half-marathon a week later, on 18 October, I really want to get 1:39:xx, so I need to know I can do the 10k in sub-45.

Ok. Focus. It will be fine...

Really bad idea, or totally ass-kicking plan? Hard to say.

So my crazy running friends Shannon and Susanne recently pulled off a half marathon in under 1:35.

So now my inner toddler is like "WAAAH! I WANT THAT TOOOOOOOO!!!!!"

Of course my inner negativity is all "Bwahahahaaaa, as IF."

And yet somewhere is an inner ambition that says, hey, why the hell not?

Well, indeed, Inner Ambition. You make a good point. The potential is there.

The problem is that Inner Ambition's sense of timing is a little unrealistic. IA thinks we (uh, guess that would be me plus miscellaneous inner voices) should do this at our next half-marathon on Oct. 18th. This means that on Oct. 11th - the date of my next 10k - I would need to pull off a sub-43:00 10k. 42:42, in fact, according to McMillan. A pleasingly symmetrical number. Unfortunately my current tempo and interval paces aren't remotely in the neighborhood required for that kind of 10k time, but why let a little detail like that hold me back, right? The reckless crash-and-burn-freudig part of me is sort of curious to see how badly I'd flame out if I started running a 10k at 4:16/km pace.