Are We There Yet?

Fatigue is definitely starting to set in. Not necessarily physical fatigue, but the long mental haul of training for the marathon. We have now been training for about 13 weeks. We have just over 5 weeks left to go and while that really isn't such a long time, it's 5 more weeks that limit what we can do. Anytime anybody asks me what is going on I feel like my answer is "uhhhhh, running!" At first it was great and exciting and now I feel like a broken record! I mean, I'm still excited and love when we are out on our runs, but I look at my calendar and would enjoy seeing an excursion outside of Chi-town.

It has taken its' toll on our summer fun. Kris and I would love to go camping or up to Door County this weekend, but with an 18 miler on the calendar, it's a no go. I miss Saturday morning Farmer's Markets and long walks with the dog. I know D could have a packed social calendar with the holiday weekend, but again, 18 miles. Basically, most of Saturday is kind of spoken for and we'll have to be in bed early Friday night. After our 16 miler, I tried to drive around Chicago 2 hours after the run and there were lapses in time that I can't even remember. I was worse than a driving teenage texter!

The commitment part of the marathon is definitely the most difficult part. I think that anyone can do it if you put the time in. It's just finding the time or wanting to find the time that separates those who do and those who don't You aren't just putting the time in during the run; you have to account for stretching time and icing time and making sure you're eating and drinking enough (and correctly), and of course, sleeping enough. The senior citizen bed times have come so easily. Oh Stephen Colbert, how I miss you!

I'm sure the next 5 weeks will fly by and I'll soon be posting that, "help me Jesus, help me Oprah, help me Tom Cruise, I wish I had another month of training." I kind of anticipated this fatigue would happen (the shine always starts to wear off new things, just like Cabbage Patch Kids and GIJoe) so I scheduled some fun stuff for us. Well, fun stuff for a marathon runner in training. Next weekend we will be running the Crystal Lake 1/2 marathon. I'm hoping to get some inspiration as we run along routes I used to cover in Cross Country. Then the weekend after that we will be running the CARA ready to run 20 miler. It's like a training run but with a couple thousand people, Gatorade stops and a party afterwards. Then, it's a three week taper to the Marathon.

Oh, and just want to put it out there. The three of us will be on the Lakefront running for about 4 hours on Saturday. We would love for some company along any part of the route if you're interested. Come on, you know you want to! Hit me up, I'll share our route.