Late in 2016 I saw a post somewhere saying that Chicago marathon entries were opening soon. I looked up the process and with more entries than spaces there was about a 1 in 8 chance of getting a place as an international competitor. What the hell, probably not going to happen, I signed up. A month or so later in December I got an email saying congratulations, you’re in! Oh shit.

I showed the email to my wife. She seemed to think it was a good idea to go. Chicago marathon it is. If you’re going to do one, go big!

I felt I should start training for it immediately, even though I was in the middle of Two Bays trail run training. In reality I could forget about it for months.

I had a couple of goals for 2017, one was to complete a half marathon in under 2 hours. My first half marathon was at Run Melbourne in 2016, so it seemed logical to aim for that one. It’s a flat course around Melbourne city and Docklands.

I decided to get a running coach to help with the two runs. Especially as there’s just over two months between the two runs. The plan called for two structured track sessions a week, a longer run, parkrun and a mid week easy run of some sort.

Now, with just over a month to go I haven’t run for four days. My longest non running period since I started in 2015. No injury this time, just a good old fashioned winter cold, courtesy of everyone at work being sick.