Everybody starts somewhere ! People in those races are just paying attention to themselves because it's more about beating your own time as opposed to somebody else's. I would definitely just stop thinking about it and impulsively sign up if I was you :)
I signed up last night, thanks. :) I was poking around the half marathon's website and saw they had a St Patrick's Day coupon for $5 off. So I went for it. I also signed up for a 20K run earlier in May. Hopefully I'm not overdoing things, but the 20K is a really flat course and should be good practice for the slightly longer, slightly hillier half marathon.
I have! They're still all new to me, but after reading some of the online training plans I think I'm mostly in good shape for the runs. I did add some interval hill training, and it already seems to be helping. I'm giving myself a forced day off today to prepare for another long run on Saturday. The rough training plan I'm trying is Monday intervals, Wednesday intervals, Thursday short run, Saturday long run. The interval days end up being 4-5 miles between a warm up and cool down. Depending on how I feel, I may swap one of those weekdays with something like walking or hiking or _add_ a day of walking or hiking on an off day. I'm more sore than I was doing running or other cardio consistently but with no real plan. I think that's good; it's soreness, not pain. I do feel the miles in my knees a little, but again it isn't pain. It's no worse than a full day backpacking. My running form seems to be holding steady as I up the miles. I ordered a water belt, and it should be here today. I needed it last week, though it's cooler again this week. I also need to figure out nutrition while running. That's new to me, so I'm going to pick up some gels and take one with me for the middle of a long run.