Forced break..another washed out season

After struggling to a below par 3:14/33K in the most critical training run, on 3rd November, for Spice Coast Marathon I was anyway on the verge of backing out from the event. I did not see a point in incurring travel and stay costs to either run a 4h+ FM or run just a HM. However, postponed the decision till after the next two long runs , that is, 25K on 10th November and 32K on 17th November.

When I stopped after just 3K of the 25K run due to niggle in the left quads, pain in the right ankle and super negative thoughts in the mind it was game over for the Cochin event. The mind started looking for reasons to justify the struggles with long runs including the switch to vegan diet.   The last straw was when Dr. Basavaraj, an ortho at BGS hospital, whom I consulted due to increased pain, tenderness and swelling in the right ankle, diagnosed it as peroneal tendonitis and advised rest from any physical activity of the lower limbs for 3-4 weeks! In a way it was a blessing in disguise as my long training runs were among the worst ever and I would have probably struggled to do a sub 4 hr marathon even on a flat surface. This would have further hurt my confidence in my ability to do a sub 3:47 ever again.  However, now targeting a time goal for even the Mumbai marathon on 19th January 2020 looks futile. As I will be left with just 5 weeks of training assuming I can restart running from 1st Dec. This means the 2019-20 is another washed out season - the 4rth one in last 5 years.

Well such is a runners life : injuries popping up at the most unexpected of times and derailing plans for the season. Given how the last few seasons have gone  I need to seriously introspect as to whether I should:

A) give up on timing goals for FMs and just run for completion and maybe switch to slow ultras(albeit flat, road runs)  OR g

B)  stop running marathons/ultra marathons and stay with easy runs of shorter distances

While I very well know B) is sufficient from a health and fitness perspective andis probably the logical thing to do it is unlikely the heart will allow me to stop making attempts at FM timing goals for a few more years!!