One of the mini-lectures delivered during my first running training had to do with motivating yourself. I remember a number of the 'tricks', but frankly posting stars on calendars didn't speak to me. But the idea of posting your fitness plans on Facebook for the world to see does make some sense to me.

The idea is that if you put it out there that you are going for a 3 mile run, you're going to get questions from your friends. They're going to want to know how it went. And you'd better have an answer, am I right? If you're like me, the answer 'I didn't do it' just isn't an option.

So yes, once I had decided to go for it, I posted on FB that I was training for a marathon. So now my thousands of 'friends' are aware of this. I occasionally get questions from my real friends (as opposed to those hordes who have asked to be 'friended') about how it is going. Occasionally I'm asked why I'm doing this. So far the only answer that comes to mind is because I can. And that's a big one. It sounds silly, but it's mind-boggling to me that as a new runner at age 60, I can train for a marathon.

Moving on to the point of this blog.......

I'm supposed to run 13 miles this Saturday, but I will miss my training run because I'll be on a plane headed to Buffalo. I have to start cleaning out my mom's house to put it on the market. But I still need to do that run soon in order to keep up with my training schedule as I don't want to drop down to a different training group. So here's my plan: I've mapped out a 13 mile course in and around the small town I'll be in, and on Monday morning I will run that course. There are no sidewalks, and I don't know what traffic I'll encounter. Some of the roads are vaguely familiar to me, but some are unknowns. I do recall some pretty steep hills and that will be something very new for me. I'll probably walk those. The prospect of doing this is daunting. But I know I have to do this for myself.

So I'm putting it out to the Universe (and to SP) because having done so, I now have to follow through.