The Missoula Marathon and Half Marathon are six weeks away. I realized this with horror the other day when I looked at the calendar. You, no doubt, have been training your patootie off in preparation. I, however, have not.

My springtime training schedule had to be altered due to an unfortunate misunderstanding with gravity earlier this year. I thought I'd be fine, though, because I'm doing the half and not the full, and because the incident occured five months before the race, which would allow me adequate time to heal. Right?

I've recently been able to start ramping up my mileage, by which I mean I've been able to get up to five miles once a week - and I've been pretty happy with that, until I looked at the calendar the other day. Six weeks left!

Maybe you haven't been training either - maybe you've been busy, or maybe you just recently decided to run the marathon, or maybe you thought it was still March like I did. Well, at this point, perhaps you should consider doing the half rather than the full. I looked up six-week marathon training programs online for you but Google thought I meant sixteen-week marathon training programs. A search for a six-week half marathon training program might not yield such sarcastic results.

Regardless of where you are in your training program, good luck! There's still six whole weeks left!

Kelsi Camp