When I am not training for the marathon and I look back at my training, I’m always curious to know what state of mind I’m in when I am at the 20 mile mark. It’s so easy to forget what my days are like, what I am eating, and the experience as a whole. This is one of the main reasons why I like to write about my running journey – to capture the moments (yes, even the insignificant ones), of what I am experiencing during my training. To avoid writing a long block of text, I will break it up with the help of a few visuals.
To prepare for my training week, I attempted to increase my carbohydrate intake:
Mid training shoe replacement – I absolutely LOVE the Mizuno Inspire. After all, I did set a half-marathon PR (sub 2 hours) with these shoes. I actually really loved the Mizuno Elixir’s, but since they are discontinued, this was the next best thing. I’ve been training in them but it was time for a new pair. The hubby got some too! Unfortunately for the hubby, they weren’t the best fit and he had to return them. As far as for me, they are awesomeness…great stability but nice and light…
The hubby and I are celebrating our 13 year wedding anniversary! However, our anniversary is on September 8th and we will be going to a wedding next week. This meant we had to change up our running schedule up a bit and decided to go out to dinner on Friday night and run on Sunday instead of Saturday.
We decided to go to RM Champagne Salon – I had the Roasted Half Chicken with fries and it was delicious. We started our dinner with some salmon deviled eggs, and they were amazing. I paired my delicious meal with a glass of Malbec and it was perfect.
Sunday morning… ready for our 20 Miler… This is one of the things that I like to remember. I am a super lazy runner and I don’t like to get up in the morning. But I knew that this was going to take us a while so I was super motivated to get up at 5 am. When we arrived to the lake front this was what the Chicago sky looked like.
I decided to take my phone with me to snap a few pics of our run. This will be the last time we run as far north on our own. The next 20 miler will be with CARA and we will be running South.
Since we decided to run on a Sunday and super early, it was a ghost town along the lake front. I got excited every time I saw another runner. The hubby and I both expressed that we felt a glimmer of hope as we got further north and saw a few of the running groups. At mile 8, we typically run into a Fleet Feet booth for some water and Gatorade, but this time we thought they may not be out there. As we neared the 14.5 mile marker we were relieved to see a Fleet Feet table full of little cups of water and Gatorade awaiting us. Thank you Fleet Feet!!
This is our half-way point (10 miles in!)
20 miles.. done… celebrated with a nice back bend
This was our week in training… in a nut shell… now, time to rest and recover for a few days. We may be putting less mileage this week given that we are going away for the weekend for a wedding. (We just may find a little path to get our run in…. we shall see! )
An Infinite Path... 