Throwing my hat in

Back in November I blogged about my goal of running the New York City Marathon by the time I'm 45, which is in 7 years. After seeing the Spirit of the Marathon last week, I decided that it was high time to actually do something about meeting that goal. So on Friday I found the official ING New York Marathon Web site and discovered that the lottery for entries opened today.

I just finished registering myself for the lottery, and I have my confirmation e-mail. I'll know in mid-June whether I've been accepted. I'm keeping my fingers and toes crossed that I get in. With any luck, I'll be in decent enough shape by then that ramping up in time for a November race won't be too hard, or at least as not too hard as training for marathon can be. If I find out that I've been accepted, I'll start thinking about joining a training group of some kind. No one else I run with has expressed any interest, and I'm not sure I'm dedicated enough to do it on my own.

If I don't get accepted, I'll try again next year, and the year after that, too. The race has guaranteed entry for anyone who has signed up for the lottery but not gotten a slot three years in a row. So worst-case scenario is that I'll be running it in 2012. But I hope it's sooner than that. Now that I've made up my mind to run NYC, I want to get going.

This goal even inspired me to get up and run this morning even though I really didn't want to. Ella didn't have school today, so, in theory, I could have slept until atleast 7:00, if not later. I'm glad I got up and ran. I've started this quest on the right foot.