This past weekend was filled with all things marathon. First I met up with fellow blogger chicks for some pre-race (or pre-spectating) carb loading at the warehouse of spaghetti on Friday.
Angie left before the picture to get Duane home for a pre-marathon sleep. We didn't forget her, and held a sign up for representation. Here we have
Damie, Mira, me,
Laura, and
Sam.

Saturday was a long day of bike riding, cheering, chasing Olaf around town, shivering in the cold, more cheering, riding with marathoners to the finish, and a little more shivering. It was fun watching Olaf, Sam, Laura, Gina, Lindsay, Steve, Layla, Cayce, Duane, Lisa, Casey, Rachel, Carolyn and the other 10,000 runners strive to meet their goals. The goals ranged from a 2:50 marathon, to PRing in the half despite sickness, to finishing a first full marathon. It seems to me that just about everyone whose goals I knew of met them.
That got me to thinking about my athletic goals. I'm scared to admit them most of the time. If I have a real, true, deep-down dream goal, I almost never say it aloud. If I do verbalize a goal to anybody, it's a goal that I'm pretty sure I can hit. I'm not
pessimistic about my abilities, I try to be more
realistic. Why is it that most people are not scared to share a dream goal that they may fail at meeting? What's so hard about letting people know that I am disappointed in myself sometimes? And what's wrong with
being disappointed sometimes?
At work we teach about setting SMART goals: goals that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Rewarding, and Time-oriented. If you don't make goals attainable, then you'll end up disappointing yourself when you don't reach them, right? But in running, is this really a bad thing? Maybe sharing goals will keep me accountable for actually training to meet those goals.
I mentioned to Damie last time we were at track and running a 7:00 pace that I'd like to run a marathon at that pace. But I think I'm scared to actually try. I know it's a way-out-there goal for me, but if I really worked for it, I don't see why I couldn't do it. Come to think of it, I just might be scared to run another flat out, stand alone marathon. I'm pretty sure I could run faster than the only one I've done, which was 8 years ago, and is now only 3 minutes faster than my Ironman best marathon. But how much faster? 5 minutes? 20 minutes? Oh it sounds so painful!
Thanks to everyone who shared their true goals this weekend. I'm getting my motivation back thanks to you.
It is a most mortifying reflection for a man to consider what he has done, compared to what he might have done. ~Samuel Johnson, in Boswell's Life of Johnson, 1770