Tap Out

In the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship), the contestants have a method of saying, "Enough is enough." The "Tap Out" signals the end of the match. Perhaps one contestant loses heart to continue the battle, or he realizes that he has been hurt and that the right answer is to stop for now and to live to fight another day.

I am tapping out of the Fargo Marathon. The combination of trying to train in the winter and some lingering injuries has made it clear that I will not be ready to run 26.2 miles on May 9th. I will attempt to complete the Fargo Half Marathon, but I would not complete the full marathon. (As I look out of my window it is once again snowing as hard as I've seen it all winter.)

In my training runs for years I have adopted the approach that I want to run each training run in such a way that I can run tomorrow. In other words, the training run is not the race, and I have tried to train under control, rather than set a new PR one day and then have to sit out for a few days to recover from the too-hard training run.

This Tap Out is a bit disappointing. In part because I do not know how much more pounding my body will be able to take. At some point I still hope to complete one more marathon, but I have come to accept that Fargo 2009 will not be the one.

Pressing On!