Chicago marathon: week seven

Welcome to double digit land…where sore butts and legs are guaranteed.

Training has officially gotten serious. We had to remind myself again that hitting the double digit mark means things will start to get a little tricky. Not only will running consume more of our time, but our butt and legs will now be tired 24/7. The good news, Listy and we only have two months left! Wait. Is that good news? OH GEEZ.

– Rest. Tuesday – 3 miles. Hooray for late night thunderstorms! We can’t tell you how excited we were when we stumbled outside and found a huge puddle of water in the parking lot. Not only did we need rain for obvious reasons, but it finally cooled things off. Other than feeling a little sluggish from a restless night of sleep, our run was speedy and simple.

– 6 miles. 4 miles. W. T. F. On this run, we came to the sad realization that we are indeed getting old. How in the world can an hour of playing kickball (a 5th grade P. E. sport) leave our hamstrings and back so tired hat we contemplated buying a walker? Okay, we're exaggerating a bit, but this run suck major BAWLS. We wasn’t too worried about our sore hamstrings because we can generally push through the pain. But when the ol’ back is giving us grief, well, that’s a different story. When we left the apartment we told myself to go slow and take it simple. We kind of knew deep down there was no way we were going to be able to finish six miles, but we told myself to give it a shot. Not even a mile in and we were in pain. Probably should have stopped and went home, but we pictured myself 3 miles from the finish line in Chicago and told myself to keep going. We figured we'd better get used to the idea of being in pain. We know, we know…it’s major crazy town, but we needed to hit some kind of mark before turning around no matter how sore our body felt. Even though we only ran 4 miles, it was a mental victory. For us, sometimes that’s all that matters.

– Rest. Friday – Rest. Saturday – 12 miles. Wakey! Wakey! Do you like running double digits before you eat the bakey, bakey? Sorry we couldn’t help myself. Listy and we (that’s right, the running partner is back!) took on our first double digit run together. Thankfully after two days of rest our back was in tip top shape. Phew. We didn’t have a game plan other than doing an out and back from her house. To keep our minds busy besides the usual gabbing, we zigged and zagged through Denver neighborhoods. “Oooh, let’s go that way. We see a trail! Let’s jog through the University campus.” Needless to say we kept ourselves entertained and before we knew it, we were running our final 2.6 miles around Wash Park. We will say that our butt started to hurt towards the end. This happened to us last year when we were training for the Big D. Whenever we start running more than 10 miles, our body always go, “Wait a minute. We didn’t sign up for this.” Don’t worry, we had a chat. All shall be well for next weeks 13 mile run!

– 3 miles. Zero. Our paranoia got a favorite of us after our long run on Saturday. We are still babying our feet and decided to rest instead of going for a run. We know it’s good for the body to do some kind of light workout after a high mile run, but we didn’t want to push it. We need our feet to 100% by race day! Total Miles: 19 Catching up: Week One Week Two Week Three Week Four Week Five Week Six