Not so much as in “dedicated”…more along the lines of “I should be.”

So, I’m back, and all married off, but more on that later…

One week ago tonight, I had just reached out to take my passport back from the customs agent, my skin was still aglow with the buttery Mexican sun I had been lounging in for the past few days, and I was still of the opinion that (after almost a week away from it) winter in Wisconsin wasn’t all that bad, when my phone rang. It was my sister.

After a few pleasantries, she said, “We’re doing Green Bay. Training starts Monday.”

“We?”

“You and me,” she said.

I had no plans of running a marathon until October of 2009, which is when the Marine Corps Marathon that I’m already pre-registered for is going to be….and even that I’m frankly not truly looking forward to.  In fact, I had recently told Chief of Stuff that I was looking forward to months and months of glorious post-wedding and post-teaching-two-classes-in-my-”spare”-time non-compulsory activity…to just straight up doing nothing on the weekends.

And I surely had no plans of ever running Cellcom again. Every year for the past three I’ve done that race, and each time I say with great emphasis and conviction, “Never again!” (Nothing against race organizers — you put on a fantastic event! Really. It’s not you, it’s me. I’m just personally not crazy about the scenery or miles upon miles of concrete that seems to wreck havoc on my body).

But for some godforsaken reason, I said yes.

Maybe it was the daily exercise of having to don a bikini amidst a sea of size zero-zero college girls on my mini-honeymoon after being home for the holidays for a couple weeks.  Perhaps is was out of a show of moral support to my sister, a recovering smoker who signed up for this  — her second — marathon as a strategy to keep herself on the wagon. Or, maybe it is because deep down, I won’t feel as though I’ve “earned” the right to sit on my front porch in May — as I promised myself last year that I’d do — and cheer on the Madison Marathoners as they run by without having done 26.2 myself, first (This, unfortunately is the way my brain works. It’s scary in there).

It also has to do, a little bit, I think, with the desire to shed a little poundage — about 10 to 15 in the spirit of full disclosure — for this coming triathlon season, as the last time I remember feeling good in my own skin was when I was training for the Madison marathon a few years back.

Whatever the case may be, I start my official training tonight with a little speed work, courtesy of the FIRST program.

Gulp.

Despite knocking off a couple marathons, half marathons, and an Ironman in the past, for some reason, I’ve developed a serious fear of the marathon. But I’m not afraid of the training — that, I enjoy. And I’m not afraid of being able to cover the distance — because I’ve done it before.

No, I’m afraid of two very specific things: 1) being slow, and 2) being bored. Or, perhaps more accurately: being slow because I’m bored …and unmotivated.

Oh, and the mind-numbing, searing pain I always seem to get in my legs post-race. But that’s a long way off and maybe I’ll quit being such a slave to fashion and try out a pair of those hideously-ugly compression socks that seem to be all the rage.  Or maybe not. But like I said, long way off.

I feel a huge amount of pressure at this point to be faster. To set a PR. To attempt a sub-four-hour marathon. And that, I think, has contributed to some great anxiety on my part.

And after a week’s worth of agonizing over it, I have decided to release myself from all this angst. Mainly, I am giving myself permission to run without a time goal. I will train consistently, I will not use the training as an excuse to justify eating what I want (this is a new and novel concept for me), I will support my sister, and I will have fun. That is it. That is all.

And along the way, I’m hoping that I can re-discover the joy of just running, because to be honest, it’s been a slog lately. (And by lately I mean at least a year.) I’m hoping to re-discover how good it feels to run without obsessively checking one’s Garmin every 30 seconds. How good it feels to just run, and not having the euphoric feeling of completing a 10, 15, or 18-miler ruined because your mile splits are 10 seconds off what they were the previous week.

And I’m hoping that this isn’t taking the easy way out. That it’ll help my head in the long run (no pun intended). That it’s a good plan.

But, considering a marathon wasn’t even on my radar a week ago, I figure any plan, at this point, is a good plan.