Liz Trains for a Marathon: Liz cannot freakin' wait!

I am so excited to go run a marathon now! Why you ask? (Good question!).

First off, I figured out leaving the course open for 6 hours is a 13:44 pace, not a 13:30 like I originally thought.

But seriously, today was the Twin Cities Marathon. If you're from out of town, it's a gorgeous run along the lakes and river in Minneapolis and St Paul and finishes at our state capitol building. I knew several people running. Congratulations to Heather who qualified for Boston (looking forward to some good winter training I hope), Beth who has a big birthday tomorrow and Robin who ran with Beth, and to Yvonne who was a last minute entry.

For entertainment Beth (different from the Beth who ran, I know, try to keep up), Jenna and I met in St Paul, biked over to Lake Calhoun (mile 6), cheered for everyone, then hauled tail over to Lake Nokomis (just past half-way), and cheered for everyone again. At that point, Jenna left us to cheer on Heather (who runs at an obscenely fast pace and had stretched her lead over our other friends), and Beth and I went to the River Parkway (mile 17) and then met everyone one last time at the top of the hill where they all pour on to Summit Ave. Here's the route we took. It wasn't exactly the same as the marathon course, so we were able to get ahead of the runners in several places.

It was standing at Cretin and Summit that made me most excited to run in two weeks. It just looked like a lot of fun to be out running and having everyone cheering the runners on. I hope the marathon is a big deal in Amsterdam because now I'm looking forward to 26.2 miles of people cheering for me.

The bike ride was very fun cold and fun. I had lots of layers for my morning.

Once we got done riding and cheering, I sped off to Chipotle (between not eating breakfast and biking 20 miles, it's ok) and then to Kelly's house to meet the apple picking crew.

Apple Picking was quite fun. I got to do lots of tree climbing. Amanda made a bunch of apples fall on her head. (That's because she was saying "I know, we've read this before" over my voice as I was reading how not to make apples fall out of the tree.) I didn't buy apples but I did eat lots of them. Ironically, even with me not buying any apples, I believe we left with more apples than in any previous year. (Four pecks this year to three pecks in all previous years.) I did enjoy hot apple cider and an apple doughnut.

Now I'm at home, too tired to move. I need to think about dinner and also call my parents. What am I thinking about dinner? Where can I buy it from? But I need to be back to call Mom and Dad. Oh, the conundrum.

I'm looking forward to training the next couple of weeks also, just running 4 days a week, and the longest run is like 10-12 miles. I'm so excited about the marathon, I feel the urge to go for a really long run. I understand that's bad so I'll try and contain myself.