My miles have been cut back this week as I head into my taper and I find that I have so much time on my hands suddenly … is this what it feels like to be a non-runner??? What would I do without running? I think i’d find myself being bored.

Well, I guess i’m working on deciding what the next challenge will be for me in my athletic career .. I have 3 marathons scheduled for this fall and after that, I’m thinking that it might be time to move on to something a little different. I love running, and won’t give that up for anything, but the challenge of running a marathon is far behind me now after 19 marathons over 4 years, so now i’m thinking my next challenge will be one of two things… #1 an ultramarathon or maybe #2, the triathlon ..

I’m not sure about doing an ultra though, it seems that its a major time commitment for training, even more than I have to give now just running a regular marathon. I’m not sure I have the extra time in my schedule, but in comparison, the triathlon training schedule might fit nicely into the same timeslots that I spend marathon training now, plus I get to mix up what i’m doing a little bit. As I look past the OBX marathon in November, I am just not looking forward to running 20 milers in the snow and cold again this winter, it really did suck last year and the result of the first marathon in the spring weren’t the greatest, so was it worth it? I guess I don’t know for sure, but i’m not sure how I can do any better.

If you follow my blog, you’ll know that I bought a road bike back in June, and I love riding it .. although I still have a lot to learn about it. I’ve spent time this past summer swimming at the pool and I actually learned how to “really” swim, I just need a lot of practice, thats all. The way I figure it, I have the winter to work in the gym with swimming, cycling (and maybe spin class) and then running outside (smaller distances)… maybe do some smaller half-marathons or something, who knows.

Well, lots of things have gone through my head lately.. I was reading through my twitter feed and read that one of my favorite bloggers Healthy Living with Kelly is hanging up her keyboard and stepping away from blogging.. in one way i’m sad because I enjoy her posts and energy, but in another way I can really understand it. I’ve even thought myself that keeping a blog, and surfing other running blogs and other running websites all the time can be so time consuming, I sometimes miss out on things I could or should be doing while I spend time online. Sometimes it feels like an obligation to write a post on my blog or comment on someone else’s blog or website about something when I used to do it because I really loved it .. maybe i’m jealous that she made a decision to wrap it all up and step away .. who knows. I know somethings up with me because I can even tell by my posts that they have been shorter, less frequent and they seem like more rambling about nothing more than anything else..

Ok, I got that off my chest… good luck to Kelly, i’ll miss you. I have some decisions to make for the next year as to what the next challenge will be.. so stay tuned.