The first step to solving a problem is to admit you have one.

I do not know anything about running a marathon. I decided mid-June to sign up for a space in the Oct. 7 Chicago Marathon — a 26.2 mile run/walk/crawl across the city.

I am going to chronicle the last, zealous month of training periodically in this blog.

At first, my problem was too much time. I spent my summer tucked into isolation in a sparse, desert region of North-Eastern California as a volunteer at a National Forest.

Work was not easy, but it was only four days a week.

Running might sound like a strange answer to ‘how to fill time,’ but considering the unnatural amount of pain I felt after packing 45 pounds on my back and trekking up and down mountains as my day job, I thought the only way to get out of that mess was to get above it.

Deciding to prepare for something like a marathon requires considerably more motivation than a normal activity — it requires fanaticism.

In fact, I would not be the first to say anyone who chooses to run a marathon probably has more than one reason to do it and at least one of them will not be healthy.

The second problem was too much ego.

Running begins to define you if you do it enough. Even a few miles every other day can be enough to make it creep into the back of your mind when you least suspect it.

It affects your diet because you know that the burrito you’re eyeing up is going to be unpleasant if you try to run even four hours after eating it.

It affects your sleep — if you do not get those solid seven or eight hours, kiss a run you can actually enjoy goodbye.

The point is: if you are going to let running define you, why not do something you can be proud of?

That is what I thought before I really started training.

My third problem was hubris, or blinding self-confidence.

Needless to say, there was a lot of pain, there was a lot of time spent thinking the turkey vultures flying overhead were going to get a sweaty, stringy meal if that next ranch house did not have a water spicket.

I would like to say the hard part is over, which is actually deciding to do it and stick with training, but I am back among the living with two jobs, a girlfriend, parties and school.

My final problem is that I have a life again, and I anticipate hard times ahead.

Enjoy.

Monday, Sept. 10

It is a day of small failures and triumphs. The failure may be large; in fact, I would rather not think about it. I did not run.

There may be a name for the self-loathing felt by a runner who coops himself up on a rainy day and eats more curry leftovers than decency would allow, but as with most things running-related, I do not know what to call it.

Failure seems like a strong word of not running on a rainy day; to anyone else, it sounds like common sense, but the marathon is a looming beast. To be more precise, it is the shadow of a beast. To a first-time marathon runner, it is impossible to know how much running is enough.

It is similar to baking cookies. Without a recipe, you know generally what goes in but not the proportions. The only difference is awful cookies can be tossed out quickly while a botched marathon will be suffered through until the humiliating six and a half hour cut-off.

They will cart your body away to be hooked up to a Powerade IV and fill you up with pity and PowerBars.

The triumph also seems small, but it has grand implications. The iPod Nano I bought the day I decided to run the marathon went on a screen lock frenzy last week, rendering itself useless despite all the Internet advice available.

Again, it seems small, but running fifteen miles translates to about two or so hours of really getting to know yourself without music.

You obsess about the three mosquito bites on your left knee, you plan the next five meals you are going to eat, you curse the three bugs you accidentally swallowed, damn the mosquito still stuck in your eyelid, and still have time to sing to yourself the chorus of a Hall and Oats’ “Private Eyes” one thousand times.

Maybe the cold will kill those dastardly mosquitoes.