Blanketed by Gnats

Oh today's run was wonderful, despite the fact that I was attacked by gnats nearly every step of the way. I'm beginning to wonder how staring at the ground is affecting my running form. Because that is the only way I can even begin to avoid those little devils. The scary part is, sometimes you can see them coming and other times you simply cannot! When you can see them coming, it's like a big, black cloud is about to envelope you. Gnats also seem to know exactly where the runner are...you never see clouds of gnats hovering over the unmanned grass areas. No, they stay put on the path. It seems to me that the gnats are suicidal. Perhaps it's global warming?

As I stated above, the run went pretty well. Joanie behaved herself admirably after some tweaking. A friend from CES recommended that I set her to "average pace" to help deal with the occasional signal loss and other such disasters. It seemed to work, so Joanie and I are back on good terms.

This is an odd week in terms of training for me. The Chicago Marathon is the end of goal of what I'm doing right now, but I also have two half-marathons before I get there, The Chicago Distance Classic and the Chicago Half-Marathon. So even though the CDC this weekend is technically an LSD, it's still a race and last week was still a cutback week. Normally, with a big mileage weekend, I'd have a big mileage week. But because of the above mentioned reasons, this week is being treated like the week before a big race (because it is) in my training schedule. Therefore, there's no speed work, etc. on the menu. But I wanted to do speed work, so this morning, amidst the clouds of gnats, I did a fartlek and it went pretty well. I got a little weak at the end, which was scary, but I'm not sick so I'll chalk that one up to being hungry and not very well hydrated.

I must say I'm a little nervous for the CDC. The last half marathon that I did, didn't work out so well. See here for how it (and I) went down. And I know I'm not sick this time, but I don't feel as prepared as before and the weather will be waaaaaaaarm and those things worry me. other things do to, but I'm attempting to not get too far ahead of myself.