Fear and control

I am worried. The 2008 Portland Marathon happened a couple of weeks ago which means that I have less than a year to the next one. Right now, I'm not even at the point where I can run one whole mile, much less 26.2 of them. I am afraid this goal may be bigger than I can handle...I don't want to give up, but I also don't want to set myself up for failure.

This marathon goal keeps bumping up against the fear. There is still so much of me that believes I will fail, that I can never be a runner, that I will always be exactly the same way I have always been. Argh! I don't want that...I want to run...I want to be awesome...I want to succeed.

I have been thinking about food more lately, which actually worries me because it's a very slippery slope between trying to eat healthier and all-out restriction dieting. Such a tempting idea, dieting. It seems like the perfectest, simplest way to just take control over your life. It's a false sense of control though...and at least for me, dieting would really throw my tenuous connection with my body's hunger and fullness signals (not to mention what it would like to eat vs. what I am willing to feed it on a diet) out of whack. Also my trainer said not to be restrictive right now and she actually said I should be eating more calories than I actually am, so I know dieting is not the right way to go. It's so, so tempting though. So tempting.

I think in this case I'm going to have to deal directly with the fear. It comes up when I think about going out for a run. It comes up every time I go to my trainer's for a session. It comes up hardcore when I think about mile eleven or mile twenty or mile twenty-six. Man, I don't know if I can do this...

Update: Okay, I just talked to Brian a little bit about changing my goal. I think I'm going to. I have a lot of little goals that would be glossed over or missed entirely if I just pushed myself to do the marathon this year, like running a whole 5k, running a whole 10k, finishing the marathon with a respectable time, actually becoming a runner and enjoying running instead of just gutting it out to fulfill this one marathon goal. The tough part is the feeling that I'm somehow giving up or letting myself down by changing my goal. But I guess Brian is right...I'm not exactly changing my goal, just changing my approach. I wonder what my trainer is going to say...