The Solider Field 10-Miler started half an hour ago, and I’m not there. A couple of days ago, I made the decision to skip it.
First, last Saturday everyone was dragging, so we blew off Family Tae Kwon Do. Unfocused GIrl is hoping to test for her yellow belt at the end of this session, and missing two classes in a row would almost guarantee that she wouldn’t be ready.
Second, I’m not ready for the race. I could have run it anyway and treated it as a training run, but I wouldn’t have been racing, so what’s the point of blowing up our Saturday morning routine? I’ll run 10 miles tomorrow, and find a Sunday race. The North Shore Half Marathon is coming up in a few weeks, and I may run that. I ran it last year; it’s a very nice course.
The Unfocused Life 
I thought for sure you would be doing the race. It seemed as if you were ready, based in what you wrote. My wife isn’t running it either. She’s not ready and was afraid of hurting herself trying to get ready. Besides, she’s sick in bed now anyway. Good luck on the half if you do it.
Tsk, tsk. I was going to pretend that I ran it, but I see that my husband already blew my cover. He’s right, I’m not ready and didn’t thing setting myself up for injury was the best move with the race schedule I have coming up. Felt a little dejected picking up my shirt and returning the chip immediately. Oh well.
I wouldn’t have skipped it just because I didn’t feel ready — like I said, I could have done the distance and treated it as a training run. I’ve run any number of races with no hope of a PR, just for the fun of it. But this is the only race I run that’s held on a Saturday, and this year for the first time the kids have a regular Saturday schedule that’s almost impossible for one parent to manage even though everything we do is at the Y. If I had done the race, it would have meant that Unfocused Girl would have missed Tae Kwon Do, which could have impacted her ability to test next month. It might also have meant that Unfocused Junior would have missed his swimming lesson; he skipped last week, and the week before the lesson drove him to screaming hysteria because Mrs. Unfocused had to sit 15 feet away, so it was important to get him back in the water.
The real problem is that I didn’t think about any of these things when I registered; I signed up for the race out of habit as much as anything, and just didn’t put the race schedule together with the Y schedule until I was planning when I would pick up my race package this past week.
It also looks like the North Shore Half isn’t going to work with my schedule, so I’ll have to find another spring/early summer half marathon.
Jenn, I think you made the right decision. If you’ve got other races already lined up with your schedule, don’t worry about missing this one. If you didn’t feel ready to run it, I think pulling a Did Not Start for one race out of a busy schedule is better than a Did Not Finish due to injury. I’ll post about my 2006 Chicago Marathon experience sometime soon. My running hasn’t really recovered since.