CHICAGO!

This weekend, my friends (Alyssa, Marie and Jacque) and I took a weekend trip to Chicago, to relax and sight see and sleep a lot. Well...we saw the sights. Not sure if I allowed for much relaxing or sleeping. But that's beside the point.

Last Thursday, I saw Dan (Cubicle Dad)'s status on Facebook, something about how he was dreading the hill and puke blah blah blah, and I thought, "well, Alyssa and I will be in the area, we have to do 8 miles, a run like that is fun in a group, we should do it!". So I emailed Dan and asked for directions, without consulting Alyssa. (I'm a good friend like that...). Then Marie and Jacque (who are NOT training for the marathon and do not deserve to get their asses kicked at 7am on a Saturday), decided that they too wished to run up and down a hill for hours on end. I hang out with some weird people. But we get along great...

Fast forward to Saturday morning. I had set my alarm for 6am, thinking we could be out the door by 6:15 and to the hill by 7. When I woke up, I realized that it was way too light out to be 6 am, and when I looked at the clock it was 6:42. Dammit. Now I had a decision to make. I could either send Dan an email explaining what had happened, apologize profusely, and sleep an extra 3 hours, OR I could run downstairs, drag everyone out of bed and get to the hill a little late. Because I am THAT GOOD of a friend, I ran downstairs and asked what everyone else wanted to do. The 3 sleeping faces that looked up at me did not look happy with the idea of getting out of bed, but I knew that I had told Dan I would be there, and because I was set on going my amazing friends were too. (Im telling you, they are nuts...)

I would tell you how fast we got there, but all I can say is traffic was light and we made good time (always doing the speed limit...mom....). We rolled up in true Madison form, late, frantic, unprepared, but totally ready to go. We all just jumped in and hung on. It was awesome. I got to talk to Dan, and I met Dave, the guy who ran the marathon with my cousin Lauren last fall and wrote all about it (he was much nicer than Dan and Lauren described him...). As my friends and I ran back and forth, we laughed about crew workouts, sweated, swore, discussed what foods we would eat when we were done, and had a blast. Props to Marie and Jacque for even entertaining the idea of hills, let alone RUNNING THEM with us. When all was said and done, we were all glad we went, and I know that it was one of the best training runs I have done so far.

We got back from the hill, ate waffles (shout out to my Dad...), showered, lounged for a bit, then went downtown to the Museum of Science and Industry and fought past crowds of little kids to play with all the cool stuff. Then we went on a sweet segway tour (pictures to follow...) of the city, and made it home for some dinner (shout out to Mama V...) and a late night viewing of the ever-epic movie, "Space Jam".

All in all, a pretty kick ass Saturday!
:)
kv