Conundrum

My initial plan going in to this racing season was to get back to where I was before grad school started. For some reason, I thought that would take just a few short months (yes, I'm now realizing how outrageous this is) as after perusing my 2014 goals I see half marathon PR and 10k PR on tap for this spring. As in 4-5 weeks from today.

I was hoping/planning/trying for a close to 2 hour finish at the NYC half so that a ~1:55 goal time for my spring goal races would seem plausible. And that 1:55 half time would give me the green light to sign up for a fall half, because somewhere around hour 4 1/2 of the Madison Marathon I vowed to never run a marathon unless I was 1000% sure I'd be breaking 4 hours. Running 11 minute miles for 26.2 miles is not something my body was meant to do. Ouch. My form falls apart when I run at that pace.

So clearly after last weekend's half performance I'm seriously doubting everything about this fall. In analyzing the race, I think the sort of shape I was in for a half would be slightly sub 2:10, and due to some execution errors and tourist tendencies, I was obviously slower than that. Regardless 2:10+2:10+:xx minutes= way more than sub 4.

Obviously there's a lot of time between now and October (a solid six months) but marathon training would start around June, and typically speedy runs end up taking a back seat to straight endurance mileage for a marathon training program (hence my ever slowing marathon times).

So do I suck it up and still sign up and try my damndest to still get faster (without breaking, which is always the trick with my body) and sign up for the full?

Or do I spend the summer working on 5ks and 10ks and shoot for a speedy fall half instead?

Keeping in mind that I've somewhat vowed to never run a spring full again, so I'd have to wait until Fall 2015 for another 26.2. Gah.

This is why I vowed to never stop running when I got back in to distance running in 2009 (aka the last time I came back from barely running).

See.

CONUNDRUM.