Glutton for Punishment

For better or worse, I'm gonna give the marathon another shot in a few weeks. I was alerted this morning that the Chicago ultra 50/50 has decided to extend their usual race offerings to include a certified marathon distance along with the usual 50K and 50 mile races. The race is 3 loops around a stretch of the Lakefront path that I am very familiar with running, so it should be a pretty nice run for me. Additionally, having volunteered at this race a few years ago, I know it is very well run. Also I just couldn't pass up the $28 entry fee. Whatta deal.

So now that the decision has been made, I need to come up with a way to recover properly from Chicago and still stay sharp enough to run fast in 2 weeks. I think I'll dedicate this week to recovery with shorter slow runs, and then next week I'll try and incorporate some race pace and track work into the plan. The final week will be an easy taper. I'm trying to treat this race as a bonus race and put no real pressure on myself to PR. I'll even give myself the option to bail entirely if I feel like I haven't recovered enough by race day. However based on how I feel today, I think I should be good to go.