Day 1

As you can clearly see by a quick scroll through this blog, I am REALLY good at blogging.

I definitely fell off the blogging bus for the last race, but I have had a couple people ask me if I am going to keep updating it for the marathon and I thought I'd give it another try.

Quick update on the half marathon: Madeline and I did it.  We finished.  It was really rainy.  We had fun.  Madeline will probably never do it again.

But now, my friends, it is time to begin training for the Chicago Marathon this fall.  I am really excited to start training.  For anyone wondering, I am following the Hal Higdon Intermediate 2 Marathon schedule.  I have used his training schedules ever since my first marathon and I think they are really well put together (plus then I have less planning I need to do before each run).
This is my first training regimen that includes cross training, so this will be new and different.  For those that don't know, I am now living in Chicago and loving it.  My building has a pool, so I'd like to think that I might swim on my cross training days, but to be honest, I am a really bad swimmer and there are always people in the pool.  So, I think I will bike on my cross training days.

Today was Day 1 of training and it happened to be a cross training day.  I signed up for Divvy, which is a bike sharing service (if you don't know what I'm talking about, think of Zipcar, but for bikes).

I decided it would be nice grab a Divvy and bike along the lakefront.  It was so beautiful, but my legs definitely felt it.  I didn't realize how differently biking works your muscles.  I think I ended up biking about 8 miles and I got this great picture of the skyline from afar (see below).

I am looking forward to more running and biking on the lake and I promise to try to keep the blog more updated this time.

Also, let me know what your favorite workout tunes are!  I need to make a workout playlist.  Currently, I just throw my music on shuffle and, as much as I love "Hallelujah" by Rufus Wainwright, it really isn't conducive to working out.