In a few hours, I will be running my third marathon, and this time, the circumstances are different and seem a lot bleaker.

My Savannah, my first marathon, I averaged over 80 miles per week in the three months leading up to my race. I had completed workouts I never would have thought I'd complete before, such as running 15 miles under 6-minute pace, and was driven by an emotional determination to prove something, in some ways to escape the cage I felt like I was in at the time.

I ran 2:40.

My second marathon, in Albany, Georgia, didn't go as well. A regular training week with my friend, Greg, was 45 miles per week on three runs per week. Yes, I would get the volume in on the runs I did do, but my ankle got sprained far too often. I wasn't doing well balancing my academics, running, work, and other extracurriculars. Because I'd run 2:40 in my first marathon, I went out in the race at the same pace that I started my first marathon in. I fell apart after the half marathon point, and the second half of the race felt like unspeakable pain.

I ran 2:52.

This time, however, is especially special. I made a commitment to compensate for my lackluster training for Albany and get my training up to 90 miles per week again and consistently run workouts, intervals, and long runs. I thought it was going to be my best training cycle ever.

Instead, 45 miles was likely my best week. I haven't done any workouts. My longest run was 15 miles, 11 miles shorter than how long I have to run today. I have gone several weeks without running at all. I expect if you were to accumulate my total mileage over the last three weeks, it would have been less than 20 miles.

For several months, running almost not at all brought me shame: I signed up for the Baltimore Marathon today with the intention of it being my best marathon ever. However, it's likely to be my worst, and given that Baltimore is a much hillier city than Savannah or Albany, the empirical likelihood of myself running as well as either of my previous attempts is likely very low.

I mentally and emotionally cussed myself out at my inability to train at all, whether it was because I have to wake up at 6 a.m. every morning or because of the mounting obligations of being an inner-city teacher with so much of my time devoted to planning and grading. I used to be able to function fine on five hours of sleep or do 17-mile long runs easily on three hours of sleep and a hangover. Now, I need eight or nine hours of sleep, without running, to be able to be fresh and function and be the best teacher I can be.

Yes, this is a time of heavy transition for me, but I'm still 22. I tell myself this often: if I had the mental fortitude I had as a college athlete, I would have accomplished my training goals, or at least made an honest effort towards them. Being a real adult with a very difficult and exhausting job does not change that.

I believe, somewhere deep down, that I can do it all: be the best teacher I possibly can be, a good runner, have a social life and great relationship, and fulfill my obligations to my church and ministry. To it all, I do it for God. I didn't used to. I'm accomplishing all of these lofty goals and expectations with the exception of being a respectable runner right now.

The truth is, however, that running just isn't that big of a priority to me anymore. While it used to de-stress and energize me, now it only makes me more stressed and tired now. My schedule doesn't allow for me to have consistent training partners, and I very much do not enjoy running alone.

The writing is on the wall for so many people who ran as athletes in college once they graduate. A fellow runner I met in Baltimore, before a 10k the two of us ran, in August, confessed only running 40 miles cumulatively between his graduation in May and mid-August. His personal best in college was 3:59 in the mile. It's not like I'm a hobby jogger, but I'm not where I used to be, and the fellow runner I met isn't where he used to be either.

The game has changed for me, as it has for him. My obsession with running when I was in college seems so trivial now that I'm a special ed teacher in the inner-city, living in a city that faces seemingly insurmountable challenges. I have bills to pay now that I used to have help on. For all the concerns that the city of Baltimore, my community, my school, and my kids face, the fact that I am not running that much is the least of those concerns.

And so I press forward running 26.2 miles with the consolation and silver lining that I'm doing this in my new city, for Baltimore. I'm running this marathon partially because I paid over $100 sometime back in May and I don't want to waste my money, but also for God. I was more alarmed that the marathon course mostly navigates the more gentrified and bougie parts of the city than I was by my own lack of fitness when I looked at the map yesterday, and recently I've been wrestling with whether running is a "country club sport" reserved for the privileged and the professional elite.

But for me, when I'm running, it always felt like I was entering another wild-west world where anything was possible, exempt from the constraints and rules of the real world. Every runner can tell you of the races they've had that made no sense, when they binge drank for days and had the best races of their lives or the times they trained the best they possibly could and still didn't have it in them on race day. I have seen so many runners finish races with ferocious kicks after been beaten and dead numerous times earlier in the race, completely unsure of what conjured their untapped reserves at the finish line.

A miracle might happen today. I'm just smart enough to know that I shouldn't be gunning for those miracles in the first 15 miles now. I will go out slow and relaxed, not at 17:45 for the first 5k like my previous two marathons.

I know I have almost no training for this one, but I'm running this marathon with no regrets.