Fall crazy

Eight days ago, I ran the Boston Half and it was a glorious 45 degrees, clear and crisp and breezy, perfect weather. It got chilly. Then it got cloudy. And yesterday, it SNOWED. Now if I were up on my cult film-ology, I would produce an instantly recognizable quote from Apocalypse Now, but instead I'll just say that I was waiting for the frogs and locusts to show up because for crying out loud, it's OCTOBER. Today, it's beautiful and sunny again, still rather chilly but walkable, and I am astounded to see that the little piles of snow that had accumulated by the time we got home from the grocery are gone. I really hope Mother Nature isn't psyching me out on this one. Really.

In other news, I've decided to run the Chicago Marathon next year. My running mentor/organist friend Richard was running it the same day I was doing the Boston Half. He called me before my race started and we had a lovely chat, shared our pictures after he got home, and then it hit me, like a ton of bricks. I think I want to do a marathon. I KNOW I want to do a marathon. Oh my goodness. So I was talking to Richard about it and he says, "Why don't you come run Chicago with me next year?" And that was it. We haven't talked about hardly anything else. We're going to get hotel rooms and make a little mini-vacation out of it. I've already bookmarked Hal Higdon's novice marathon training program (debating between the novice marathon program and the novice supreme - I think I can maintain my basic mileage on my own, up to about an 8 or 9 mile run, so the 18 week program should suffice) and contemplated what running through the winter is going to be like (layer system, you have nothing on me) and how I really need to get a pair of those running tights that have muscular support in them, and how amazing it's going to feel to cross that line and, somewhere down the line, tell my kids that I ran marathons, because of course I'm going to have to do more than one. This could become an illness.

Shiksa running - staving off the crazy since 2007. Get on board, little children, there's room for many a-more.