Chicago Countdown: 14 weeks

For a week that had some pretty nasty weather, training wasn't affected too much.  A few notables from the week...

For one of my mid-week runs, I set out to do a six miler with some hills in The Woodlands along Flintridge.  As I was running, I realized that it was my first solo run in close to a year.  When I got the clearance to start running again in January, Adam has been with me every step of the way.  Don't get me wrong, I LOVE to run with Adam.  I get to do one of my favorite things with my favorite person.  But it felt really good to be out on my own.

This same run also taught me an important lesson.  During the heat and humidity of a Houston summer, BODY GLIDE, EVERY TIME.  No matter the distance.  Since the six miler wasn't my long run, I neglected this key to Houston running survival.  I am still paying for this mistake dearly along my sports bra band.  Sorry if TMI, but I'm of the belief that in running there is no such thing as TMI just like when someone's preggo.

I got some much needed new shoes.  I had gotten a pair of Brooks Launch about 6 weeks ago, but they're a bit short and don't provide as much stability as I'd like on my long runs.  So for this new pair, I went with a pair of Brooks Glycerin.  I'll let you know how the Brooks DNA technology goes.

For our long run this week, we headed up to Huntsville State Park and ran a portion of the Rocky Raccoon 50 miler.  The park was awesome.  Loved the trails.  A great mix of roots and gentle hills.  Oh, and I fell again.  That's now 3 times in our last 2 trail long runs.  I was much more airborne this time and made a really funny noise.  This time it was almost instantly funny.  Nothing hurt, not even any scrapes (which is good because I'm still healing a bit from my fall 2 weeks ago).  I will probably have a bruise on my hip though.  Adam made the joke, "practice makes perfect."  I think I'm just getting them all out of my system before October.

The last thing of note from this week is that I've kind of re-worked my training schedule a bit to re-focus my goal to include Chicago AND the Goblin Valley Ultra Marathon 2 weeks later.  I know crazy.  Many of us McMurtreys (Alan, Scott, Melanie, and Lisa) are doing this run in Utah, and we just can't pass it up.  We're both really looking forward to it.

With that said, we are now going on two trips in one month which is totally not like us and are buckling down quite a bit to save up for the airfare and what not.  One way we're saving money is that we are staying in a hostel in Chicago.  I had no idea there even were hostels in the U.S.  A year ago, I think I would have said NO WAY, but there's something about feeling like you've been to hell and back and just saying why not? when you know you can persevere through anything.  Seriously, though, I don't think the Chicago Getaway Hostel will be bad.  We'll have our own private room and bath, and our entire stay will cost less than one night at the hotels in the same area.

Next week brings a jump in our long run distance to 14 miles, plus I'm keepin on-keepin on trying to improve my mid-week runs.