Back on track redux?

Last week was a wash as far as exercise goes, though we did have a very nice trip to the Miami Zoo on Saturday. I find myself in singularly low spirits this morning (this afternoon!), in the way that one does after having risen to various occasions one after another - I am pretty much in a state of collapse. Hopefully a couple sessions of vigorous exercise will improve my mood; I know that really it will take some days to settle back down to a good routine, I should just be patient! I have a lot of travel coming up over the rest of the year, but this is my month of being in one place, so I really have to make good use of it.

I've made a couple decisions about upcoming races:

I had originally thought I wouldn't go back to the US for Thanksgiving, as I'm traveling for most of October, have family visitors tentatively scheduled for November and know that I will much prefer not to disrupt the routine again for more travel, but I now feel that it would be mean-spirited for me to indulge the perennial desire to hole up and do my own thing instead of socializing: really I should join family and friends on the eastern seaboard as Brent is committed to traveling in any case.

That then opened up a possibility I'd written off on the basis of its incompatibility with a September ironman, but which now reemerges as quite appealing given that I won't do that race after all - and I have gone ahead and registered for it - the Philadelphia Marathon. I won't go crazy training for it, but it's nice to have a goal, and I'll be in New York for much of October anyway, which means I can do quite a bit of the training outdoors as opposed to on the treadmill. I'd be in Philadelphia as of the Wednesday before Thanksgiving in any case, so it just means adding a few days on to the trip, and it will work well to have extra time to see family and friends there - usually I am packing too many different people into too short a trip.

The other race is a bigger deal - I have taken the plunge - I am now registered for Ironman Coeur d'Alene on June 26, 2011. I decided against trying for Wisconsin again, on the basis that it's a terrible disruption to the beginning of the school year to go off and do something on such a thoroughly different note (and so mentally all-consuming); I wanted to avoid the hottest races, and I liked the idea of a relatively early-season race in that it will let me do a lot of my training outdoors in New York through the end of May rather than mostly indoors in Cayman over the summer. I think I'll probably do the Harriman Half again too, if it's still scheduled for late May; it would be great to have a half about 4-5 weeks out from the big race - this is good, I'm talking myself back into a bit more enthusiasm about the whole thing, it has been a very discouraging summer vis-a-vis fitness!....