6 Days Until Running and Juggling Madison

Today, my wife and I went running together. Well, she was running, I was joggling. We did 2 miles together, then I ran another 4 while she went home to cook dinner. We make quite a pair going along the sidewalks of the Bucktown neighborhood in Chicago. Lots of people smiled and pointed at us. A few cars even beeped and yelled things out the window. I have such a great wife. She is quite tolerant of my eccentricities.

Joggling with her outside was a nice change from the solo joggles on the treadmills at the fitness center. It is just a happier experience. If you are trying to become a world class, long distance joggler you will have to spend time training outdoors and on the treadmill. I’ve done treadmill joggling for as much as 95 minutes at a time.

In future posts, I’ll discuss how to become a high endurance joggler. But for now, I’m just going to chronicle the lead-up and results of the Madison Marathon.

I found out today that the Madison Marathon is supposed to be a relatively “flat” course. This is good as it should lead to a better finish time. There are supposed to be about 1400 marathon runners so I just might be able to finish in the top 200. That would be great! They also have a pace team who will run as fast as 3:10 marathon pace. I’ve decided I will keep up with them and then try to make up a few minutes in the final 10K of the marathon. I know this won’t get me a world record time but it will give me my fastest marathon ever and maybe get me to the 3 hour mark. We’ll see.

The world record try will be in the Toronto marathon in September. Hopefully, the presence of other, faster running jugglers will inspire some innate greatness.