90 Days to the Finish Line--Part 1

It's now 90 days until October 7 and the 8 a.m. start of the Chicago Marathon. I know this because my wife and I are training for it. Again.

Five years ago, the thought of doing a marathon was not seriously rooted in our athletic sub-conscious. We'd done some short-course triathlons. Done a 100-mile bike ride at a 16 mph average pace. Run lots of 5K races. But a marathon? Not bloody likely. I suppose we looked at it as one of those "boy, wouldn't it be cool if we could accomplish that?" types of things. However, it seemed so out of the realm of possibility that it never entered the serious discussion phase. Then, ironically, childbirth happened.

My wife had our son in December 2003 at around the same time the Rockford Area Literacy Council announced it was organizing a half-marathon to be held in May 2004. Wow, wouldn't that be a great thing to accomplish a few months after the baby? And, so, just like that, off we were, doing the half-marathon training program developed by the legendary Hal Higdon.

The 12-week training program was tough but it got us in great shape and we finished in 2:04; an incredible time, we thought, for two people who'd never really run longer than 5 miles at a time, even in the glory of our triathlon days. More importantly, it began to remove the doubt we had about completing a marathon.

I'll never forget the conversation we had about a week after the half marathon. We sat in our living room, baby boy sound asleep upstairs, looked at each other and said, "so, should we do Chicago?" We agreed that our son was at a relatively low-maintenance stage in his life, babysitters were plentiful and, hey, we were halfway there already. What the hell? Why not?

And, again, off we were on the Hal Higdon 18-week marathon training program. While the half-marathon experience was relatively uneventful, the Chicago Marathon experience was not.

Tune in shortly for tails of blisters, muscle aches and a "reversal" on the Chicago El. . .