We made it!

It was December 12 when I got the email telling me I would be running the Chicago Marathon.

It’s kind of funny how soon after the Chicago Marathon is run they start the lottery process for the next year - that acceptance came basically two months after the event.

But that means it’s 10 long months until the actual marathon.

And now we’ve made it now through 7 of those months, and the rest fall in the training window that I’ve created for myself.

Starting with today.

Today calls for a 3 mile easy run to kick things off.

I have made my training plan (and printed it out, because that’s how I like to look at it) - I started with that Runner’s World plan I told you about and tweaked it here and there.

I added some cross-training - some weeks it will be bike, some weeks it will be strength, some weeks bike and strength - and I factored in any other events that will take place during the training period. (I’ve added another race in September, so I have re-jiggered some of the running around that weekend.) I also rearranged the weeks a bit because Runner’s World has the long runs on Sunday and I like to do them mostly on Saturdays. (Even though the Chicago Marathon is a Sunday I prefer the training runs on Saturday because if there’s some kind of weather delay it gives me Sunday as a postponement option.)

Otherwise, though, I’m really excited to give this Runner’s World training schedule a go - Wednesdays (which I have on Tuesdays sometimes) are track workouts which I’m going to try to follow to a T.

Those are really the most intense runs of the whole plan, and they increase in intensity as the weeks progress.

And of course, I’ll ideally be increasing in strength and ability to handle those as the weeks progress.

I’m looking forward to getting it all going…and of course now we’ll have weekly training recaps on Sundays, so I’m looking forward to telling you all about it as well.