So, am I a fraud or what?

This is what an hour and a half drive with plenty of time to do some “self talk” will do to you I guess.

Driving home from the Chilly Half yesterday, I had quite the debate going. Honestly, it had started in my head about a week earlier, but I had been pretty much ignoring the little buggger of a voice within, waiting until it was the right time to give it some uninterrupted time to sort out my thoughts, and yesterday was that time.

I often laugh at myself when people who both run & don’t run, ask me what I’m doing on the weekend of a race. While I say that I’m doing xx race or yy race, in my head I’m saying

“don’t freaking say you are racing, you don’t race, you don’t leave it all out there on the pavement, you don’t even properly train for a lot of these things… how on earth can you possibly say that you are racing!”

While I do go into these “things” with some sort of a goal, it’s not often time oriented, it’s most often to finish, feeling comfortable, or help to pace someone else to their time goal or first event at that distance.

Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love seeing the look on someone’s face when they finish their first half marathon within their own time goal. I take such pride in their accomplishment, and the fact that they let me share in this with them.

Is this selfish of me?
Does this simply make me a nurturer of the “running family” that I’m so blessed to be a part of?

I just don’t know. Perhaps it takes the pressure off of me to perform better myself? Do I use it as an excuse to slag off on my own runs sometimes? Or am I afraid of pushing myself to the limit, actually training for something properly and with an ultimate goal at the end of the road… A lot of things for me to think about over the next couple of months I guess…

I have a “duplicate” medal from ATB last year as we originally got the wrong medals for completing the relay. I tucked it in with my other medals for some reason, but it came to me last night. I’m going to flip it around and hang it backwards on my bathroom mirror…

Then I can put a sticky-note on it with a real, honest to goodness GOAL (for me) for sometime in 2007….

More to come on that goal in the next 5 weeks or so, stay tuned! =)