Inaugural Ilinois Marathon

Last time I trained for a marathon in April was in 2007 for Boston Marathon. I remember training at 5:30am on the streets when it was extremely cold, dark in the early hours, when majorly of people where either sleeping or just getting out the house and off to work. It was never very pleasant to leave the comfort of a warm bed at such hours to run outside. It was also hard to get out of bed on Saturday at 6am when was freezing or snowing or both and to drive all the way to Morton Arboretum to run long miles.

But I endure it for the sake of running Boston which was itself a great motivator motivator. Only those who had done Boston Marathon really understands what means to run it. So I did it. I found the courage and the determination to train for 16 weeks, 5 days, logging in 35-40 miles a week under very undesirable weather conditions. I was very happy when the training was over and off I went to Boston for the big day!

After the race, I remember telling my buddy Marc that I would never ran another marathon in April which implies training during the worse months of this crazy weather in Chicago. Well, here I am again doing exactly what I said I would not.

Back in November I found out about this inaugural full marathon in Champaign. Since the company I work for is located in this city I found everyone asking me if I wan running it. I ended up signing up for it without thinking that I would have to endure another 16 weeks of pure hell. That's what it means to me running outdoors during our winter; just hell. That's what I call "nuts about running". I have to be nuts or else....

Well, here I am with another training in front of me. The last two weeks have been nothing more that freezing cold outside and to make things even worse there is so much snow on the ground that is almost impossible to run outdoors. Since nothing stop me from logging in my weekly mileage I had no other choices other than either running on the streets which is dangerous, running on a treadmill which is extremely boring or running on an indoor track.

The last is the best of the three however my gym does not have a track which forces me to join another for a couple of months. The plans is to run during the week on the tracks when temperatures is under 5 degrees and try to go back to the Arboretum on Saturdays for the longs runs if weather permits.

Its pretty hard to run long mileage on a track. I been there done that and believe me, nothing to brag about. Once, Mark and I did 18 miles on it. If I remembe well it was around 126 laps around. It was nuts but we did it. I guess if there is a need I will do it again. Just for the sake of running.