NYC here I come

OK, so I launched the mission and subsequently failed to deliver. But I forgot to add a caveat: this mission will take place over the course of the next several months. An intermittent mission, if you will. It will come in surprise bursts so don’t fret, I will deliver!

For now I am focusing on wrapping up the end of another semester, relishing brown, sloppy slush … and looking forward to summer with a vengeance.

I also learned recently that I gained guaranteed entry into the New York City Marathon in November. This is a big deal for me. For the past three years I have dutifully paid my registration fee to get my name in the lottery to win a chance to run. And for three years, I have come up a loser while being forced to watch the likes of Lance Armstrong and Katie Holmes garner all the publicity.

But not this year – for those of us persistent enough to not lose faith in luck, we get guaranteed entry the fourth year. Woo hoo! If only all lotteries were so fair. It also seems symbolic in some weird way that 2008 ended up being my year to run – this year I turn 30 (and just a few weeks before the race). It seems like a good present to myself to mark this apparently important milestone. I also ran my first – and only – marathon just a few months after turning 25 so if this pattern holds, I won’t be pressured to run long distances again for another five years!

The funny part of it all is that this is actually the first year I haven’t spent much time at all dreaming about running that marathon. Maybe it seems so far away still… maybe New York seems so foreign and different from where I am at now. Maybe my first arctic winter has made me lazy.

Besides, there are some fun marathons to dream about in Alaska and… well, I have been slacking on running the past few months and feel woefully out of long-distance running shape. But alas, it is time for me to buck up and start trudging through spring slush like all the other Fairbanksans out there this time of year.

I’ve got a race to train for!