I started my training for the Chicago Marathon at the beginning of May. It has been a bumpy ride so far, but I keep on chugging along. As I was working on my 4 miles this morning, I realized that this training is NOTHING like my training for the Chicago Half Marathon I ran in 2015. When I trained for the half, my runs were challenging, but overall most of them were not hard. So far, training for the full, practically EVERY run has been hard. Every step is work — including on my short runs. I obsess about my pace — which I also did when I trained for the half. But once they upped the minimum pace time to 15 minute miles, I knew I was fine since I was running 12 – 13 minute miles (I’m not a fast runner, and I don;t apologize for that). The minimum pace time is the same for the full marathon, but I am struggling with getting to a 15 minute mile. Most of mine are in the 15:30 range. This is partly due to the run/walk intervals I am using and partly because of the fact that I had knee surgery in March and my knee is still acting up to this day (I’m guessing my knee would be lots better if I quit this running nonsense) and partly because I lost my conditioning since I got hurt in February and did n;t start to run again until May. I feel tons of pressure to run this race. I didn’t decide to do it in time to get my name in the lottery so I am running now for a charity — which I really have no issue with since it’s a charity I’ve been involved with before, one that I believe in. But the pressure comes from knowing I have to fundraise a nice chunk of money regardless of whether or not I run this race. If I get hurt, I am still on the hook for the fundraising, so I feel pressure to run the race since that was my impetus for the fundraising all along (by the way, I am training with Team in Training to raise funds for Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, and here’s a link if you’d care to donate). So while this training might be lots and lots of work, I just keep my eyes on the prize — and keep icing my knee 🙂