Fork(s) in the road

I know I just did a tri a little over a week ago but I am itching to throw one more in this year!  The open water swim left a bad taste in my mouth (not literally because I didn't put my mouth in the water, ugh!) and now I want to do a redemption race.  The Fall Frenzy is September 11th and I did it last year as my redemption race for the flat tire in Tri for the Cure.  It is close, small, and a pool swim (of only 500 yards).  All pluses.  The minuses?  Race fees and training for both that and the Denver 1/2 Marathon in 8 weeks.  So now I am trying to figure out what I want to do.  I decided I would wait until I did my long run (the first one in over a month) so I could see where I was in terms of  1/2 training.  When my run was finished I still had no idea what I wanted to do!  Here are the options I came up with:

A:  Train for both the tri and the half marathon at the same time.  That means a brick and a long run each week.  Doable, but a little tougher now that my sister has gone back to California and is not available to watch the kiddos.  Man, I was spoiled when she was here.  I checked Craig's List for "free nanny" but surprisingly no results.

B:  Just train for the half marathon and try to get faster.  I was really happy with my distance during the long run, but I was not happy with the time.  I was a lot slower than I wanted to be.  I want to average 9 minute miles for the race and I was running 9:50 yesterday.  Blah, that's a big difference!  It was like I had rocks in my pocket.  If I wasn't worrying about a triathlon then I could really focus on picking up the pace.

C:  Just train for a FULL marathon and be slow.  This one is a long shot but I have to say I am considering it (mostly because I suffer from delusions of grandeur).  I have 8 weeks until the race and I already ran (almost) 10 miles.  Could I totally work it and get up to 20 miles before the race??  I can change from a half to a full all the way up to race day.  Tempting, but I don't think I am there yet.  And I have to admit my main motivation is that I always have to correct people and tell them that I only did a HALF marathon.  Dang it, I want to say I did a marathon.  Plus, I live in Colorado and every other car I see has a 26.2 sticker on it.  It is like they are taunting me.

D:  Train for the half or full marathon and phone in the tri.  I could just do the tri for fun and not even worry about my times (FYI- there is zero chance of me not caring about my times).

E.  Start sleeping in and going to the mall.  My legs are voting for this option.

So I guess the real question is: Do I want redemption, speed, or distance?  Hmmmmm....