F@#k

So in response to my (admittedly lackluster) writing regime, I received some gentle "encouragement" to update the website. Shortly after my previous post (around the time the school year started to ramp up in intensity) it became clear to me that maintaining a training schedule commensurable with marathon preparation is not, unfortunately, a feasible objective at the moment. Right now, my plan for the academic year is to have finished all of my quals by the end of the summer (about six months to a year in advance of the "standard" timeline for UT students), so towards that end, I'm taking a relatively intense course load. I also live sufficiently far away that it takes me about an hour to get to and from school, so I'm also sacrificing 2 hrs/day just for my daily commute. Between these two demands on my time, there are simply not enough hours remaining in the day to properly prepare to meet my time goal. That having been said, this should not be construed as an abandonment of the goal of posting a qualifying time; rather, it is simply a postponement until my course load decreases (which will happen, at the latest, at the end of this academic year) or until my daily commute shortens (I'm seriously considering moving farther downtown next year, because losing 10 hrs / week sitting on a bus is, frankly, an unacceptable arrangement). So for the moment, I'm continuing to run when I can, and I will reevaluate the prospects for marathon training at the end of the semester, when I get my next course schedule. If all else fails, I will make my next attempt by February 2010, at the latest.