No pressure

It's Thursday night and I'm scanning Facebook to see what everyone is up to, when I see a photo in a post that triggers some kind of recognition in my brain. Why is that so familiar? Oh wait, I think it reminds me of the photo I took at the Gold Coast to taunt everyone in Melbourne with lovely sunny Queensland weather.

Hang on, that IS the photo I took to taunt everyone in Melbourne with lovely sunny Queensland weather. GC Marathon has "featured" my race recap.

I am now humiliated by lack of running - I can only try and offer the excuse that having to take a work trips overseas to a mine site and then move internationally is very time consuming and makes it difficult to schedule properly.

I am now also feeling a reasonable amount of pressure to run more - and write about it. Chicago Half is off the table (I can not run 21.1km in three weeks' time) but my current training plan is for the Chicago Monster Dash in October and that's definitely do-able. Not expecting to break any records on this one though.

The training is going reasonably well. As usual, the summer weather is wreaking havoc on my body and making running very uncomfortable. The running is faster than this time in the program for GCHM, a fact that I am very excited about. I never expect to be a front of the pack runner but I really do enjoy getting just that little bit faster.

My long run today was north on the Lakeside Running Path, a messy place to be this weekend due to the Air and Water Show that's on. There were people all over the place and parts of the path were closed because of the event. I can hear the planes doing acrobatics outside my apartment right now.

Flying in formation

An example of the craziness on the Lakeshore at the moment.
Everyone is just staring up at the sky.

Hello Chicago

In truth, I have been in Chicago for nearly three weeks now but today was my first running day. I am clearly the most non-committed runner.

The move to Chicago has been slightly more stressful than I had anticipated but and my lack of running did nothing to improve that situation. But the past is the past, so I'm not going to focus on that. Onwards and upwards only here.

Today's run was nothing to get excited about and in many books would probably not even be classified as a run. Given it's been over a month since my last run, I took the slowly, slowly approach and used a walk/run method. It's also hot and humid (my two least favourite weather descriptions) which is another reason for me to ease back into it. I am now very happily fatigued and raring for the next run to put on the books.

I miss The Tan but can't complain when part of what can be my new course encompasses this...