By choice, I'm pretty much always connected. How I don't need glasses is beyond me! But this is where I talk about the discoveries I find while I'm here.

Well I guess it’s that time again. Time to seriously consider what races I’m going to train for and maybe even more importantly which of those I’m NOT.

For those you you that know me I’ve trained for the Chicago marathon for the past three years (and I greatly thank you all for still being my friends). I think I definitely need a break this summer, heck I could use a break now! Between work, volleyball and the current training program I’m in I have little time for anything else. Take a look…

Tuesday evening is the only night I have to myself right now!

No wonder why I’m so tired all of the time not to mention a persistent pile of clothes to wash! But come summer things should lighten up a little bit especially since I’m NOT training for the Chicago Marathon this year! This summer the focus is going to volleyball first, running second. I do, however, still want to do the Half Marathon training with my running friends from Chicago Endurance Sports but the lower mileage should be much much easier for me deal with. I don’t care what anybody says, an 18 mile run really takes quite a bit outta ya!

At least I'll get home earlier during the week!

Anyways, back to the races I’m running this year. Like I said right now I’m in half marathon training. While I’m not really doing a half for sure yet I know that I AM doing the 199 Mile Relay Race in California the first weekend of May and canNOT wait! It’s a 2 day race with 12 runners each responsible for 3 legs of the race anywhere between 3 and 8 miles per. It’s a little crazy but it’s a ton of fun and I can’t wait to share the pictures and stories with you. The last time I ran this race was 2 years ago already with a great group of folks from Avanade (you know you have great clients when you can spend 2 days running with each other in a stinky van).

January and February were spent getting back into the groove of training having not really run since October’s Marathon. And man has it been a struggle to get back into it. Did you know it’s cold out?!

March brings with it the promise (or tease) of warmer weather, green beer, and of course what’s considered the official start to the running season in Chicago, The Shamrock Shuffle. For last year’s race I remember looking out my window and seeing a heaping pile of freshly fallen snow, thinking “Hell no!” and rolled over to sleep another 3 or so hours. This year however I was determined to not make the same mistake; I didn’t even register. Can’t feel guilty if you don’t even intend to run! Well I ran it anyways and am so glad i did (I’ll admit I feel slightly guilty having not registered but I’ve given Bank of America enough money already). About an hour before the race I texted my co-runner Vanessa to see if she was still running it or not (hoping she’d bail). Running she was! And so I high-tailed it over to pick her up and off we went to freeze pre-race for at least 30 minutes before even crossing the Starting line.

To give you a slight bit of perspective on this race, first you have to understand that 2 days ago it 55º out, it snowed yesterday and this morning it was something like 38º and raining. The other thing about this race I and most other runners I know can’t stand is that they cap registration at 36,000 people on an 8k course. For the marathon the cap is about 45,000 runners! That means that there’s about 5,143 runners per mile. (An 8k is 4.97 miles and a marathon is 26.2 miles!) Ridiculous. But it wasn’t snowing, not like last year! We still complained just about the whole time but in a joking way and all-in-all had a great run.

So that’s it for March; now for the rest of the year:

April-

• Wrigley Start Early Run 5k or 10k (10th)
• Race to Wrigley 5k (24th)
• Ravenswood 5k (25th)

May-

• 199 Mile Relay (1-2)
• Magellan Half (16th)
• Soldier Field 10 Mile (29th)

June-

• 13.1 Marathon Chicago (13th)
• Warrior Dash (19th)
• Beachathon (26th)

July-

• Women’s 10k (18th)

August-

• Rock n’Roll Half (1st)
• Elvis is Alive 5k (5th)

September-

• Chicago Half (12th)

October-

• Chicago marathon (10/10/10)
• Pumpkins in the Park (16th)

November-

• Turkey Trot 8k

December-

• Hot Chocolate 10k
• Rudolph Ramble

Wow! What a year it’s going to be!!!! And yes, with all of that running will STILL only be second to volleyball