No more racing?

Tonight I started looking for a marathon in 2013 that I could enter. It's going to be another busy year, and I've got mixed feelings about reattempting Osaka; now I've thoroughly slain the monster of my poor time there, it feels like it would be odd to go back and run it again. The third time I ran Tromso wasn't as good as the second, although I'm not sure that's much of a guide to anything.

Part of the trouble is that I'll need about six months to get a decent volume of training done, and since I should really be taking December easy in order to recover from Osaka, that means the earliest realistic goal would be the end of June, which is not a time when very many marathons are scheduled. A few months earlier there are several, but that's no use, and a few months later seems a very long way away. Plus unless I go to somewhere horribly hot and polluted (Bangkok? No thank you) there are fewer and fewer choices.

I could just run shorter races next year; there are more of them, which means I could fit in more, but I'd like to get closer to a 3 hour marathon. I might be able to improve my speed if I concentrate on 10ks and half marathons, but I'm worried that will leave me without the stamina for the really long stuff.

Plus, without having a concrete goal, it will be too easy to skip runs, to eat too much, and not be capable of justifying all the many pairs of shoes I have around the house.

This could just be post-marathon mental fatigue. I missed most of the physical issues this time; perhaps if I wrap my head in compression socks, that will cure the problems in my brain. There's still 27 days for me to come up with some goals for 2013 though: I've managed years without marathons before. Will next year be one of them?