One may consider this a delayed posting since Michele and I will be leaving for state number 2 in only three days...guess that life got a bit busy in there for a little while such that neither of us had time to blog!!!
We actually planned state number 2 (Wisconsin) before the birth of my little one, which birth occurred on May 20, 2011 at 1:21 p.m. and resulted in little Charlotte Jodene Faith Clabaugh joining us:) Michele and I planned to run Appleton, WI MARATHON (yes, full marathon) on September 18, 2011, giving me a full 4 months to train - which would ordinarily be sufficient. As Michele was directing the Sioux City Marathon in October, we thought it would be best if she had run a marathon before the one she was directing took place.
Charli Jo (as we often refer to her), however, decided to put some changes in our plans...after 17 hours of labor it was determined her entry to this world would be via C-section - resulting in a longer delay to my return to running than Michele and I were expecting. So, at first I was just going to change to the half and Michele was going to run the full in Appleton. Then Mother Nature decided to stick her nose in things and flooded essentially the entire Sioux City Marathon route...resulting in that race cancelling. So, Michele and I decided to both run the half in Appleton and we would run a full together in October (CT race)...giving me more training time to get back on track.
The more training time still required me to ramp up miles pretty quickly, and as a result I am currently nursing "thickening of the tibial periosteum" a/k/a pretty decent shin splints in the left shin which is also causing pain in the right hip as it overcompensates for the shin injury. Michele's training has been going fabulously - this past weekend she ran 20 miles and looked great the whole way and on target for an awesome first marathon finish time. Because of my injury, I have had to cut back on miles and change October's CT race to a half...Michele is going to still run the full.
All that being said, we will be leaving on Friday morning to race in WI on Sunday and return on Tuesday. Charli Jo will be staying home with her father and her sister - and her grandmother is coming to help out too - meaning Charli is going to want me running off for races all the time so she gets time with her grandmother:)
This WI race course is pretty flat and appears to be well staffed with support stations...approximately 8,500 racers in multiple races. My projection of the race...Michele finishes at 1:51 (she may actually break the 1:50) and I finish at 1:57 (although I think my projection for myself my be a bit of wishful thinking). Weather is supposed to be nice and cool:)
October's CT race is in Hartford on the 15th...we leave on Oct. 13 and return on Oct. 18. More on that later.
