What to do about the Best Damn Half?

Disclaimer: I know I have been whining about what to do with my half and I have pretty much made up my mind. BUT since I wrote this lovely blog post a couple days ago I am still going to post it! I promise you this is the last of my whining. A decision has been made, and my wonderful readers and comment-leavers have pushed me to take a risk and GO FOR IT!!!!

There are so many random thoughts swirling around my head about my half in December. I am an "all or nothing" type of person. It is just how my brain works. So in my mind, I have two options as far as race goals:

1. Run for fun.

2. PR.

That's it.

It is a shame I cannot settle for something in between the two. I either have to put enormous amounts of pressure on myself to ATTAIN SOMETHING or I have to go into it with the attitude that I don't care what happens.

There is a case to be made for both options. Unfortunately, most of my "reasons" to do one or the other are based off of FEAR.

I FEAR that if I set a high goal for myself, I will risk disappointing myself.

I FEAR that if I don't accomplish what I want to accomplish, what will my blog readers think?

I FEAR that if I train to PR I will injure myself. (I feel like I should just be thankful I can run right now and I shouldn't push the limits.)

I FEAR that if I don't go for a PR, I will be holding myself back for silly reasons.

These are my fears. My only practical reason for not wanting to go for a PR is the fact that I am traveling to Florida for the race. I will be extremely stressed about flying and being away from Paul. I will be out of my comfort zone. I will not be used to training in Florida weather. So in spite of all of these things, do I really want to to worry about a PR?

My "official" half PR right now is a 1:38. I broke it once during a training run right before I BQ'ed for the second time, but do training runs count? I guess not because I don't even remember what my official time was, although I am sure it is somewhere in the depths of my Garmin.

All this babbling. Obviously I want to PR and feel like there is a chance I could do it or else I wouldn't even consider it. I recently ran 10 miles easily at a 7:43 pace. My splits were negative, so by the end I was running in the low 7's and could have hung on for a couple more miles. About two weeks ago, I did speed work and averaged a 7:20 mile for a total of 8 miles. That included a warm up and cool down. This past Sunday, I had a great 8 miler and ran several miles in a row in the low 7s. All signs point to I that in favorable conditions, I could probably run a sub 1:38 half, which would require running 13.1 miles at a 7:23 pace.

But do I want to put that pressure on myself?

See, this is why I never race!

Hanna @ The Millennial Next Door left me a very motivating comment yesterday that I hope to take to heart:

"I know how you feel about being scared to put goals out there and not achieve them. I felt that same fear about my marathon this Spring, and now about my half marathon this fall. But then I remember: what's the worst that can happen? It's disappointing, yeah, but then you get over it and move onto the next race. It might feel awkward to report about it on the blog, but who is going to think less of you? Missing goals happens to run bloggers ALL the time. We get it.

Lauren Fleshman said something very wise about this that I always take to heart: "My goal has been to go to the Olympics. I haven't achieved it yet...but I'm no worse off for trying." In the process of striving for her goal she met her husband, won multiple championships and made tons of friends along the way. Even if you don't reach your goal, the training you do to try and achieve it will improve your running in a way that it might not have improved had you been too scared to set a goal."

Thank you, Hanna, for those wise words!

Tell me to stop taking myself so seriously!