Cowboy Hazel

My fall marathon plans are finally taking shape. I didn't get picked in the NYC lottery (again) and so I registered for Philadelphia (again). Of course, it's a little different this year because I'm also registered for Chicago. My plan is to break 3 hours in Chicago – I'm going to train for it as though it's the only race on my calendar.

After Chicago, I will decide how (and if) I'm going to run Philly. If something goes awry in Chicago (heat wave, stomach flu, zombie attack, etc.), I'll be able to regroup and then give a full effort in Philadelphia. Or, if things go really well and my legs are feeling good, I'll have 6 weeks to recover and get back into race shape to go back to Philly and try to make up for last year. And, if I'm not feeling it, I'm only out $80 so it's not the end of the world.

Scary part about Chicago is that it's just over 18 weeks away, which means that my training plan starts on Sunday. I had been using New York as a target date in my head, so thought I had plenty of time to finish recovering before starting up again, but now that's not the case.

So, I decided I'm going to take it very, very easy the rest of this week. I headed out for a run this morning, but quit about 100 yards into it because of some serious soreness in my quads and right foot. I normally would have fought through it, but decided that the rest is more important now. Your all's comments about necessary rest are finally sinking in a bit...