Where's the Beach?

No matter how you end up signed up for a race, any race, you're going to find yourself training. You can either follow a strict plan, a loose plan, but you'll be following some sort of plan if you want to cross the line without injuries and especially if you have a goal in mind. Since I've already touched on how I ended up signed up for the Chicago Marathon and an injury, let's jump into the training. During my first marathon training, I had set up a plan for myself that allowed for 2 weeks worth of padding in case I had to cut a long run short or life in general. I did the same this round. I ended up having to use up all the padding to cover my 15 days off because of my injury. While my plan was fairly loose in terms of the miles or exact pace each and every run, I had a general idea of what I was going to do and had really banked on the extra weeks because I knew the hot weather may force me to cut a long run short. Well, for this Type-A gal, not having that pa...

I've started this post in my head a dozen times. I'm still not entirely sure where to begin. I haven't been blogging consistently. That's obvious right? That also means I've not talked a great deal about training for the Chicago Marathon, training during a Southern summer, over-coming yet another injury, and everything else that goes along with training for a race. Do I start at the beginning or do I do the race recap while it's fresh in my mind? Do I let the race settle in my head so that I can adequately attempt to talk about it? Because I'm a Type A person, I'm going to start at the beginning. The signing up for the race and the training. If you can hang with me, we'll get to race day. And I hope you will stick with me. After my first marathon in December, I ended up with a nice stress fracture. I had a slow road to recovery. An even slower road to building back up my running - both distance and pace. I ran two half marathons and a 10k, none...

Saturday morning I did something I swore I'd never do. I ran a marathon. On a complete whim, I had signed up for the Jacob Wells 3 Bridges Marathon . I won't lie, I may have had some wine that particular evening. Then I saw a Facebook update that there were only 5 spots left. I said something to Jason and he handed me my credit card. The rest? History (as they say). I feel like I should apologize for the rambling, jumble of a recap in advance. I'm still having a hard time wrapping my head around the whole experience. Preface I think I should do a preface about this race, about the emotions surrounding it. Jacob Wells was the race director. He started this race last year. Sadly, he passed away unexpectedly in November during a marathon. The Arkansas running community is a very tight community. So his death was a huge loss. I never knew Jacob personally. I had seen him at races. He was known for giving high fives and shouting out kudos. Let's just say that his spir...

It's not uncommon for me to have a million things on my mind. Sometimes I can let that overwhelm me, other times I'm good about pushing some thoughts to the side to make room for others ;-) Sometimes you just need to get them off your chest though. So here it goes, my Thursday Thoughts. Sometimes Planning is Important (especially in marathon training) Wednesday I decided to do some dedicated speed work. I sort of decided mid-run, but that's another thought. I did 4 easier miles then began 400s. My plan was to do 6 of them at a 6:30 pace. After the 2nd one, I wanted to hurl. Like literally bending over trying not to barf. I quickly changed my strategy - 4 repeats would definitely suffice. After the 4th interval and a recovery, I insanely ran up the bridge (close to a quarter of a mile) to take a sunrise picture. Dedication to beauty or insanity, I'll let you be the judge of that. I was a little disheartened at my failed speedwork attempt to be honest. How cou...