They are not goals; they are things to do

Although I have retired from training, and have no goals, there are things I want to do.

And as winter is slowly winding down, some of these things are preying on my mind.

One is to run another marathon. This will be hard to do without training. So instead of training, I think I'll just try to run more. It will be fun. And then if I want to run a marathon, and find one that will let me in -- yeah, this means you, New York -- I will do it.

The second is to ride a bicycle from my home in Wausau to St. Paul, in one day. It's 180 miles, and I've never rode more than 100 miles in on day. Again, this will be hard to do without training. I will try to ride more to prepare for it.

You might argue that there's little difference between training and running more. Or training and biking more. It's just semantics. I know you're saying it, I can hear your sneer from here.

But there is a BIG difference.

If there is one thing I've learned about myself, it is that I respond appallingly to pressure. I choke. I gasp. I wheeze. I start shaking and end up curling up in a little ball in a corner of the basement. So anything I want to do should be pressure free.

And if there is one thing that will motivate me, it's to tell me that I can't do it. I've been told often enough that I probably shouldn't run another marathon, and that riding to Minneapolis would be a foolish thing to do. That why I want to do them.