Yesterday I got an email that prompted me to utter the words, “Holy crap, no way!” and start to panic a little.

The email was a weekly newsletter from Toronto Women’s Run Series, and the first sentence started with the phrase, “With 14 weeks to go until the Toronto Women’s half-marathon…”

WHAT? There are just 14 weeks until my next half-marathon?

Holy crap! No way!

Of course, that means that there are only ten weeks until my wedding, but that’s another freak-out for another day.

I’ve been sitting around all winter getting bronchitis and having kids in hospital and the such like, when all this time I should have been gearing up to training. To be fair to myself, I never stopped running completely this winter. I had to slow down some due to all that’s been going on, but in between illnesses, I’ve been able to get in some short but good quality speed workouts.

Actually, the speed workouts may have been my downfall. Forcing myself to maintain 4:55 minutes per kilometre when my usual speed workout pace is about 6:00 minutes per kilometre probably overtaxed my body and screwed around with my immune system.

But anyway. The point is that I’m probably not in as much trouble as my mind would have me believe.

It messes with me a lot, my mind does. But again, that’s another story for another day.

What the newsletter did do, though, was galvanize me into action. I went to a few of my favourite running websites and selected a training program to follow from now until race day. And you know, it’s not so bad. This training program is not any more difficult than previous ones I have followed in the past,and as I said, it’s not like I’m starting from zero.

For this particular race, I am aiming to break 2:15. It is an ambitious goal, since my best time since I came back to running is 2:22:38. A seven-minute improvement over a distance of 21km is quite a lot. But I think I can do it and I’m sure as hell going to try. Ultimately, I’m doing this for my son, and that is the best possible motivation.

I’ll just slow down briefly when I go through the water station staffed by shirtless firefighters.