Training Tuesdays: 06.14.11.

Between now and October 30th, most of my free time will be spent running. About a million (three) years ago, I mentioned to my good friend/running buddy that I have always wanted to run the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, DC. This was during my training for the 2008 Chicago Marathon. We may have been up to 12 or 14 miles when I mentioned this. She immediately said, "Let's do it!" After finishing Chicago, and more importantly finishing training for Chicago, we decided to run Marine Corps together in 2011. It seemed like a very long way off.

After training for and finishing a half marathon in February, I decided that 13.1 miles is an ideal race distance. Challenging enough that it requires training; short enough that you don't have to devote every second of free time and energy to training. But my friend had not forgotten our conversation three years prior and made sure that I was entering my credit card number for a race entry the minute registration opened.

Now I am in the early stages of my training program. I am lucky enough to be living in an area with a strong Road Runners program, and I have joined a marathon training group that is a few hundred strong. I love my pace group and have only somewhat begrudgingly been getting up at 5:45am on Sundays for long runs and battling the brutal heat and humidity for 6:30pm track workouts on Wednesdays.

This is my running schedule for the week: