I'm a quitting quitter.

I am so mad at myself. There is no way I can run this marathon Saturday. I had already decided to drop down to the half marathon and was fine with that for my first try, but even that's not going to happen at this point. There are a million excuses why- Nathan not being home to watch the kids so I can run or getting home to late, the weather, these stupid migraines coming and going whenever they please, just plain busy-ness, blah blah blah. But they are what they- excuses. And it sucks. I suck.

I have not been motivated; I hate going alone. And I have hated knowing that I would be running alone on race day. I am VERY self-conscious when I am running and I tend to sort of panic when I am alone- case in point: a couple of weeks ago, I didn't realize that the timing of my run coincided with school dismissal from the elementary school down the street and I *literally* had a panic attack because all the parents waiting for their kids were watching me run by. Literally couldn't breathe and the crossing guard had to help me across the road. I came up our driveway in tears. Then I realized that not only would I be running with THOUSANDS of other people during the race, but another THOUSANDS of other people would be watching everybody run. Logically, I know none of these people give a toot about me running, but for some reason in my head, the whole thing just freaks me out. When I run with someone else, I talk a lot (SHOCKING, I know) but it distracts me so I don't focus on all that.

So... here I am. A quitting quitter. I have really mixed emotions. I'm disappointed because I was SO determined, to the point that I was going to show up and do it no matter what. But I'm pretty sure that if I just show up and run 13 miles on Saturday, I am going to pay for it BIG TIME. And I have too much going on right now to you know, not be able to walk for two weeks afterward. I'm still running though, I just feel like the pressure is off to run X amount of miles in X amount of time on X amount of days. I can just do it for me now. I can feel good and enjoy it and not stress over how much I suck for not doing what I'm "supposed" to.

But dang... I really am not happy about this. I think now that I know what it takes to train, I'll be ready for next year though. I mean, when I set out to do this, I had NO IDEA how much time I would have to invest in this. It just never occurred to me to do the math on how long it actually takes to run 10, 14, 20 miles at a time. And now that I know I *can* do it (I was doing REALLY well there for a while...!), I'll know how to better prepare next year I think.

But... Crap.