7 Days To CHICAGO !!!

Warning! Marathon runner in taper mode :D Well I have written about this before, taper is tricky thing, training load is much lower and your mind is kinda' going crazy. Today is exactly one week to go to this year's A race: Chicago Marathon.

I am beyond excited and have two reasons to be:

1) I have been putting in harder trainings than ever, so I can't wait to put that in reality on a race day of Sunday October 12. And what better place than Chicago with such a huge Czech community! I am getting my tshirt printed with Czech flags and will be very proud wearing those through streets of Chicago. I have replayed the marathon course overview today on YouTube and guess will do so several more times before the race :)

2) I have been selected to American Development Program!!! This is HUGE! I am not really sure about how that happened, I think it is because I filled in some kind of "share your story" form back when I registered. When I came back to check if my start corral was correctly updated (I expected to start in corral A behind Elites and American Development Program based on my best performance in Prague). When I checked my corral, it said "American Dev", I checked the marathon's website to see what that meant. I really did not believe it :D So I went back and emailed the race organization to double check and hell yes, this is happening!

It is called American, but they select also some international runners with PB ambitions, fast race time ambition etc. I don't know how I charmed them, but honestly, I don't care that much. What is important is that I am in! There is about 50 elite ahtletes - check the 2014 elite field - and behind them it will be us. Don't know how many runners are in the program, but just the opportunity to be that close to the true elite athletes makes me go crazy :D Being in the program has additional benefits the main I see is private rest rooms in the pre-start area! It is also one of the first big races where my official time will be counted from the gun time - better sneak up very close to the start line. It gives me chance to run clear not having to run around people like in the Berlin Marathon last year.

As I have been getting ready for my autumn US trip this past week, I also got my start number assigned:

478

... very exciting in the field of 45+ thousand runners!

Anybody else out there running Chicago?

Anybody from / having connection to the Czech community in Chicago?

Any tips for Chicago marathon?