I'd like to give a shout out...

High five to anyone who read that title and in their head/out loud finished, "... to Seagrams gin. 'Cuz I drink it, and they payin' me for it." :) Anyway, last week was a pretty boring running week. The usual short-medium-short runs during the week, and then my long run was a "drop-back week", so it was only 7 miles. So I thought I would give some shout outs this week. There's no way that I would be running the Chicago Marathon in less than three months if it wasn't for certain people. Here we go...

First off, I need to thank the people that are the reasons I even considered running a marathon. Two of my college roommates, Jamie and Jenny, both ran the Chicago Marathon. Now, both of these lovely ladies are more athletic than myself, so even when they did it I thought, "Wow, that's amazing that they did that. I could never do that." BUT, it put the notion in my head that you don't have to be a professional runner to run a marathon. They planted the seed. Then last year a friend/ex-girlfriend of Marc's from high school (yes, you read that right) :) caught wind that I was considering training for a marathon, but was reluctant because I wasn't much of a runner. She contacted me and told me that she had run the 2009 Chicago Marathon, and prior to that had not been much of a runner either. Hearing someone who was also admittedly not a great runner at one point tell me that I could do it pushed me over the edge to go for it.

Next I need to thank everyone who has supported me in my training and fundraising efforts. The words of encouragement, blog comments, even just asking how my training is going really keeps me accountable and reminds me that if I were to suddenly give up (which I don't plan on doing), there would be a lot of people I would have to tell that I gave up, which would not be fun. So thanks for keeping me going. :) And, I have raised almost 75% of the $750 I committed to raise for Marathon for the Cure, so THANK YOU to everyone who has donated! If you haven't donated to and would like to, the link is in the upper right corner of this page!

And finally, my biggest supporter, my waterboy on a bike/amazingly supportive husband. It began when I told him I was thinking about training for a marathon and instead of saying, "What are you, crazy?" he said, "Do it!". Then once I had registered, he made the committment of riding his bike with me on long runs. Now, when this poor man made this verbal committment, I'm sure he thought to himself, "How hard can it be to go ride my bike once a week?" Little did he (or I) know at the time, that when summer rolls around, it gets very hot. This hot weather is very hard to run in. So how to we avoid said hot weather? We get up before it gets hot. Which is sometimes 6am. Even though it's Saturday. Needless to say, he has been up bright and early with me every Saturday (with only a minimal amount of grumbling) except for the two weeks when he had social events already scheduled. He's pretty much a rockstar. Love you, babe!

Miles this week: 18 miles
Weeks of training finished: 18 weeks
Total miles of training: 239 miles