My left foot, which had given me some serious trouble a few months ago, started acting up again. Not nearly as badly this time, but enough to disrupt things. Last time I could barely walk; this time I can run, but not at frequency and and distance required by my training schedule.

I waited until the last possible moment to make the decision. I substituted biking for running, lowered my mileage, pushed back the training schedule. But I can’t push the schedule back any further; there’s nothing more to push back. If I don’t complete the next month of training, I won’t be able to finish safely. But I doubt I can complete the next week, let alone the next month, without causing an injury.

So the choice is simple. I’m not going to be running the Atlanta marathon next month.

All is not lost. I’ll run the half-marathon instead, postponing the marathon for a the future when I can approach it with many more months of training. Even with in drop my mileage, I’ll be able to finish a 13 mile race, do it with a healthy foot, and still be able to run the next day.

While this a smart and sensible choice, it is not an easy one. The marathon has, in many ways, been my goal and focus for the past months. I’ve logged over 400 miles in race training, gone to bed early every night since July to make sure I had 8 hours of sleep. I’ve eaten right, trained hard.

When I started, I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to do it. Now I know; I can’t, not now. But no one can say that it was due to lack of effort on my part.