My body tells me no; but I won't quit..

So I apologize (probably to nobody) for my long absence from the world of writing.

To catch up on the world of me, I'll try to make it short.  Since the last blog I've written, some things have occurred.  An overwhelming amount of bullshit, the details of which I will not get into at this time put some pressure on my running schedule.  That combined with the busiest promotion of the year at my restaurant led to some thrilling 12-15 hour workdays and a whole lot of residual bitterness towards my job, life, etc.  I did continue running throughout this, but admittedly not with the same passion and zeal that I had been exhibiting prior.  Needless to say, it's not always fun or even tolerable to set out on a five or ten or twenty mile run when the greatest desire in my heart is to either punch someone in the face, or sleep for an entire day. 

So the marathon came around on May 29th.  The weather and timing were perfect, and I actually felt pretty good in the weeks leading up to the marathon.  I had relaxed my goals quite a bit since my idealistic dreams of the fall, and at this point just wanted to finish the damn thing and call it a day.  And I did just that, although calling it a day is now the last thing on my mind.  I can say with absolute certainty that running a marathon is the most difficult thing I have ever done.  There was a point in that race where there was no pinpointing the aches or pain, since it was a total-body experience.  I could barely move the day following the race, and found myself hurting in a way that I'd never experienced before.  But crossing that finish line, and realizing quite what I did that day is a feeling that I will never forget.

But there's one problem... now I just want more.  Anyone who knows me well will agree that I tend to be a bit of a competitive person.  I dont like just doing something, I want to be good at it, the best I can be... so to speak.  And so I find myself turning into one of those cheesy running-mantra type people when I tell my friends and family that I feel like a changed person since the day of the marathon.  My typically stressful job has yet to even stress me out in the slightest,  my nervous habits like biting my nails and drumming my fingers have completely stopped, with no explanation except that I thing my body is telling me something.... that I should probably keep running.  And so, for the past two months, amid some of the hottest weather NY has seen in years, I've been keeping it up.  And in the months of September and October, scattered between my ridiculous work schedule, weddings, vacations, and life... I will be running another marathon, as well as a few other races.  I don't think that I will qualify for Boston this time either, but I can certainly say that barring some catastrophic injury, I will qualify for Boston sometime in the next few years.

I feel as though the blog has come full circle in that the naivete is gone now, but now my drive to succeed is even higher; especially now that I know just how daunting the task really is.