Racing season

I previously mentioned wanting to plan some races in the upcoming months. We have had some gorgeously premature early fall weather lately, and I am itching to get into the primo running months that are coming up. I may be getting a little greedy, but here goes:

• Chile Pepper 10K: a challenging 10K on the local university cross country course in October. The goal here is to see how strongly I can run this. I have worked up to some double-digit-mileage trail runs, but am pretty slow. I want to see what kind of strength and speed I can get back. My PR on this course is around 45:00, I have no clue what a realistic expectation is this time around.
• Thinking about going back to Memphis in December, which is the scene of The Last Glorious Running Day that I had last year during the marathon. This event last year felt Flowers for Algernon-ish... the last beautiful ray of sun bursting over the horizon before the world is plunged into darkness. Considering the half-marathon. Again, hopefully by this time I am able to do strong, fast, high-quality miles, rather than simply finishing the distance.
• I have never done the Little Rock marathon. This might be a good one, since I don't see any marathon-distance races realistically happening before 2010. This is an early-March event, just in time to guage preparation for...
• Boston. Mid-April. There were times this spring when I wondered if I would ever walk again. And here I am planning this thing. I can't believe it. I am using words like "speed" and "marathon" with all intents and purposes. This is where I feel a little greedy... my eyes might be bigger than my running shoes. I've been feeling good lately, getting in the groove. I'm asking alot here, this is a pretty ambitious list. Why not let myself get excited over it?

The recovery feels a little tenuous at times, especially when I consider how I've adjusted my goals farther than I often thought possible. Have I overstepped it? Am I setting myself up for another crash? I am nowhere near stability in remission... am still on a dose of steriods that isn't sustainable. The future is a toss-up as I try to lose my crutch of drugs. In the movie Cool Runnings, during that last run down the sled track, the Jamaicans are going fast. They are exceeding everybody's expectations, even their own. They are going fast, faster, faster yet. It's going too well. The runners come off of the track a little bit, the turns get harder to hold. And then we know what happens next...