Gah! It is happening. Last week we registered to run the Chicago Marathon. I'm really excited about it and I can't explain why. We've never done anything like a marathon before. We are the kind of people who declare every new year or season to be our "Year/Summer/Fall/Winter of Fitness," sign up for two or three 5 or 10Ks in a flurry of optimism, promptly loose momentum, then force ourselves to run the races anyway--slowly and while only kind of in shape. Our first race was the Race to Cure Diabetes. The only training we ended up doing for this race was to spend the night before the race "carbo loading" with giant plates of pasta and Olive Garden's chocolate lasagna. This race-day-eve behavior now seems a little ironic given the title of the race. Then there was the race where one of us, who shall remain nameless, crossed the finish line 20 minutes after everyone else because she got lost on the course. Then there was the race where we decided to eat a giant Indian dinner the night before. So many memories.....
But we are going to give the marathon a shot. It is going to be our 2011 project. Right now we have about 8 months to get our mileage up to par. We have a marathon training book that has set out a 16 week training program for us to start in June. According to this book, all we have to do before June is build up our endurance to the point where we are consistently running about 15 miles a week. I think we're both around 6 or 7 miles a week right now. My goal is to get myself up to 15 miles/week by the end of March, I think.
Any marathon runners out there have any advice?
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