Why You Should Sign Up for a Marathon Right Away
The Philadelphia Marathon is just around the corner and I will not be participating this year. At one point early in the summer, I really wanted to run it. As time slipped by, I thought about going for the half marathon. Then that got demoted to trying to be able to run over 10 consecutive miles on or near the race day, weather permitting. I will be very glad that I’m not running the marathon come 7:30 AM on November 22nd when I’m still fast asleep. But once 11:30 or so rolls around, I will be thinking that I should have taken a crack at it. Around that same time, I will probably give the 2010 marathon some strong consideration.
There were about three days over the course of this year that I gave the 2009 race some strong consideration. But it requires months strong consideration to pull it off.
Today I found myself thinking about what got in the way of staying interested in training. A few things came to mind right away. Running is hard and I don’t own any neon short shorts. Then another thought came rolling in: marathons are expensive. The Philly Marathon runs anywhere between 80 and 125 bucks depending on when you sign up. I consider this to be a lot of money to spend on the privilege of running down a few public streets, very early in the morning, on a day that is likely to have lousy weather. Unless I sell a fire alarm painting for a million dollars or the United States runs into some crazy Zimbabwe style hyper-inflation, $80 to $125 will still be a lot of money a year from now.
So once you are done thinking about how big of a cheapskate I am, continue reading and get prepared to have your mind blown.
It is not that the race costs a lot that kept me from signing up; it is that the race costs a lot and I didn’t pony up the cash right away. If running the marathon only costs $8 to sign up, I, along with a lot of other people, would have signed up right away. Come November, I, along with a lot of other people, would probably opt for sleeping in and skipping the race. $80 on the other hand, is just enough to make me feel stupid if I let it go to waste. $80 would make me feel that I have an investment in the race, something to lose. $80 would make it official that I am going to run that marathon and if I don’t follow through that would make me a big, fat failure.
So next spring, if I find myself giving strong consideration to running the marathon, which I am sure I will at some point, I will be sure to send in my check right away, because if I don’t, I will probably be in for another year of thinking that I should run a marathon some day.
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Leave a Comment October 29, 2009
