Chicago countdown: Week 15 complete, 97 days to go

Last night, I decided to get up at an ungodly hour for a Sunday. 6 a.m. for my long slow distance run. I knew it'd be warm today, so my goal was to beat the heat.

I missed my alarm, but I rose at 6:10 anyways. I was out the door at 6:40 a.m., with sunscreen piled on, the Camelbak filled with Gatorade. It was a nice 22 degrees by the time I headed out.


Took the same route as last week when I did 13 miles, but the aim was to add at least one, maybe two, miles. I took a picture this week of one of the hills. It doesn't look that steep in the picture, but it's fricking steep!

I was pleased with the run. I maintained my heart more or less within the range, averaging 149 BPM or 79%. One thing about my GSP. I ran in a lot of neighbourhoods with trees and down streets with short storefronts. I think my GPS added about a mile cause it's wonky. So by the end, I thought I'd put in 15 miles. I went back to Gmaps to map it out and it turns out it was 14.2 miles or 23K (here's the route). I'll take that. This week was supposed to be a 13 miler week but I did that last week, so I'm pushing ahead a bit with the long runs.

I'm feeling good having done my long run by 9 a.m., which left plenty of time to have bacon, sausage, eggs, toast and a lot of potatoes. With Gatorade, which R.'s mom thought looked like Windex window cleaner. I guess us runners are an odd lot. Oh, I forgot to mention that I ran 11.5K or 7 miles on Saturday. It warm enough at 8:30 that it made me run early today..

My mileage is down slightly this week from last (only 1K) mostly cause I did a lot of short three milers to prep for Friday's race.


Weekly total: 62K (38.5 miles)
Time run this week: 5:11:43
Year to date: 1,290.5K (802 miles)
Marathon training to date: 238.5K (148 miles)