10/10/02

Things are supposed to be winding down, but it's 10:25 p.m. and I just got in the door from work. I have to be back there tomorrow morning by 8 a.m. Luckily, my commute is just a five minute walk up the hill, but still, I feel a little bit swamped this week.

A lot of it is catching up on stuff I'd been putting off until "after JournalCon." That stuff should be mostly out of the way pretty soon. And I have a feeling that I'll have even more time in the next month or so, because today, I finally admitted to myself that there's about a 95% chance that I will not be able to run the New York Marathon next month, as I've been planning to do all year. My leg is screwed up. I don't know what's wrong with it, but it hurts so much when I run that I have to limp. It's been this way for about a month, and I've been icing it and taking ibuprofen and taking days off from running and now, not only does my leg still hurt, but I just don't feel fit enough to run a marathon at this point. I certainly couldn't run a fast marathon, and there's no point in doing it if I'm out of shape and injured to start with, right?

The "maybe-I-shouldn't-do-it" idea has been floating around in my head for a couple of weeks now. Until then, I was sure that I could recover in time and still run. But then I had to skip a couple of long runs. And then I remembered the story of Parker, my sister's boyfriend, who trained through a minor injury for the Boston Marathon, and wound up DNF'ing (that's one of those cool running acronym-verbs--it stands for Did Not Finish) and being so messed up to boot that he couldn't run again at all for four months. The more I thought about his story, the more I could totally see that happening to me.

I'm going to try and do a long run this weekend, but if I don't feel good (and I'm guessing I won't), I'll definitely pull out. I'll still go to New York, see my family and friends, and this way, I'll be able to actually do stuff instead of just sitting around and conserving my energy for the race. I'm going to the doctor's next week, so hopefully, they can figure out what's wrong with the leg so it'll start getting better. There's a marathon up in Napa in March that looks really nice. If my leg is recovered by the end of November, I can probably get in shape in time for that. And since I'm already registered for New York this year, if I withdraw, I'm guaranteed acceptance into next year's race. So, it's not so bad, I guess.

A lot of other stuff has been going on, too. Lately, I've been randomly hearing from a bunch of people who I hadn't heard from in years. I found out that my first "boyfriend" in high school starred in and adapted the script for the film adaptation of Kaaterskill Falls. (The first picture at the top of this page is of him before his movie star days). Oh, and my ex-boyfriend from college and his wife, who he slept with when he was ostensibly going out with me, have moved from New York into my neighborhood. Even better, he has told a mutual friend that he does not want to see me, but that if he happened to run into me, he would be "okay" with that.

Sigh. You know, this is a small city. It's an even smaller neighborhood. We will run into each other sometime, and I'm dreading the fact that when it happens, it will be a surprise. When I first found out about all this a couple of weeks ago, I was feeling very territorial and uncomfortable about the whole thing, but now it's kind of set in and I've accepted it. Sort of. Bleah. I just want to get it over with.