Like most people, I divide the year up into seasons. There are tax seasons, duck hunting seasons, Christmas seasons, wedding seasons, football seasons, stone crab seasons, Some coincide, many overlap, but each hold their own special significance. To celebrate the seasons that matter most to me, I always like to commemorate opening days.
Opening days are special. No matter what season is commencing, opening days have a special sense of hope and excitement. It is the only time when the answer to the question, “How will this season turn out?” is always, “Perfect.”
The most popular opening day in my neighborhood, takes place annually on a cold, rainy day in April (or this year late March), when the Chicago Cubs take the field for the first time of the year. It is a very exiting day. Typically 40,000 fans do best fake cough on the phone to the boss in the morning, then don their best rain suits and parkas for an exciting day of Cubs baseball. The bars open at 6 AM, and all the sudden a sleepy little northside neighborhood comes alive after its five-month hibernation.
But this is not a story about baseball. Rather today is another equally exciting, but VERY different opening day in Chicago. Today is opening day in Chicago Marathon training.
The 2008 Chicago Marathon is October 12, and this year God has promised it won’t be so hot. For those of you who were unaware, that makes it only 15 weeks away. So break out your body glide and nipple band-aides, it’s time to go for a run!
By why is today opening day? Well many people, and most organized training groups, work with a 16-week training for the 26.2 mile run. So training technically started on Monday, but today is the first group “long-run” for most training groups.
Training Groups? Yes, in many cities and towns there are these strange underground sub-cultures of “Running Groups”. These slim and often mentally deranged people wake up at obscenely early hour to meet up with other “runners” to “run.”
I have been running with Chicago Area Runners Association for about five years now. I have trained with CARA for three half marathons and one of my three marathons. This year I have deiced to pitch in and help lead their training groups. I led a very small pace group for the winter half-marathon training from January to April. There were only three people in my pace group that often braved sub 20 degree weather. Today I started my role as pace group leader for CARA’s much more significant Marathon Training Program.
There were probably 250 people who showed up this morning at 6:30 to run with CARA. They are all divided into pace groups by whatever pace they can hold for their training runs. Then, within each pace time, they are further divided into groups by how hard they want to train (which correlates to how far they will run each week). All the people that choose to run 8 minute, 30 second per mile pace, and wanted to run the intermediate distance, were stuck with me as their leader. While people will shift between groups, there were about 30 people following me around this morning.
So happy opening day. If you are training for a fall marathon, check back here for tips on running and endurance sporting. If you are stuck in my group, think about trying to run a faster pace (only kidding).
Today’s Run:
They opened up the season with a pretty tame 6 miler. Some in the group decided to spread it out to 8, but I stuck with the program to get to know the group.
6.1 Miles, 50:43, 8:18 min/mile
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