Victoria Marathon Training - Week 16

As I write this, the Victoria Marathon is two weeks away. I have NOT had a good week of running and today I started seriously considering bailing out of the race. What went wrong this week? Why the sudden (or not so sudden) lack of confidence? 1. I only ran 2 days this week, 5 & 6 miles respectively mainly because I didn't feel like running. 2. I found myself procrastinating a lot about going for runs, a couple of times I procrastinated until it was too dark outside to go. 3. One mile into my Sunday long run (a planned 15 miles) I couldn't make myself do it any more and walked home. Part of it was due to a lot of aches & pains (a recurring theme lately) in my legs and feet. This time it was primarily my right knee. I also tired after an active day of cleaning and doing errands and hadn't eaten for 4 hours....But there was a more powerful factor. It was a lack of will. An complete and utter absence of any desire to run one more step. I have had some feelings of ambivalence since the Half-Marathon, which I ran on Sept.14th. That race was pretty gruelling for me and during the last few miles I found comfort in the idea of NOT doing the marathon.... Going forward, I am afraid that even if I get right back to my training schedule this week it will be too late to make up for the missed runs. I also fear the aches and pains will come back to haunt me during the marathon, making it extremely unpleasant and resulting in an embarrassing finish time (or a DNF)....which would be harsh. So, where does this all leave me? Should I just get back on track and stick to the plan of aiming for a 4:15 finish time? Should I just go and do my best and be happy to finish at all? Should I heed the warnings from my knees, hips, ankles, and tendons and take a little break from training? Should I flip a coin? I'm not sure what to do, to be honest...and would definitely appreciate some feedback...