Chicago (booked!) + race outlook + good running song + iTunes hatred

I love the Midwest.  I'm not sure if I love it more than Massachusetts, but it's a very, very close second.  As you all know, I especially love Indianapolis and Indiana.  I have some family in Chicago, so for the past couple years we have been stopping over in Chicago for a day or two on our way to Indianapolis.  It's nice to get to see family and friends, and it's a lot of fun to explore a new city.

On my list of things to do before I turn "24" is to visit my cousin and friends in Chicago.  I'm assuming that Marek and I will be making our way to Indianapolis in the fall for some football (pleasenolockoutpleasenolockoutpleasenolockoutpleasenolockout!), Chick-Fil-A, and a Peyton Manning 2012 calendar, but I thought it would be nice to go for a girls' weekend/visit that wasn't just a quick stopover on the way to another city.  So my cousin and I both signed up to run the Chicago Rock N Roll Half Marathon "together", and I'm happily Chicago-bound in the middle of August.

I say "together" because we're both running, we'll likely start together and see each other at the finish line, but we won't actually run together.  I've run 2 half marathons with with Marek, and I don't like running with other people.  All the half marathons I'm running this year I'm running "together" with someone, but not with them.

The Hyannis half marathon is this weekend.  It has the potential to be very, very rough.  I have been slacking just a bit in the training department, and my last two long runs (8 and 9 miles, respectively) have been cut short thanks to injuries.  I had to stop the 8-mile run due to a real bad pain in my hip, and I had to stop the 9-mile run due to what I believe is IT Band Syndrome.

Now I know there's those of you out there who might think I should just scrap the whole race, but I'm still going.  My weekly runs have been fine.  The hip thing has happened before (and I have a theory why), and I think the IT Band thing is a result of running lots of hills and running on lots of curves in the Park.  I'm not expecting to have these issues in Hyannis.  I'm also not expecting to hit my goal time (have been tracking 2-5 minutes over my goal), but I'm okay with that.

After Hyannis, I have two solid months to train for the Mini in Indianapolis.  This is my favorite half to run (so far).  The weather is usually very mild, and the course is mostly flat.  It was the first half marathon I ever ran in one of my favorite cities, so it's special to me.

Then I have about 3.5 months to train for Chicago.  The nice thing about Chicago is it's pretty flat.  The bad thing about the Chicago race is that it's in the middle of August, so it's probably going to be nice and GROSS outside.  Luckily it has a 6:30 AM start time (both pro and con).  Food reward after this race will be pizza or hot dog!

The last half marathon on the schedule for this year is the Boston half.  This one I'm not registered for yet (registration will open in the summer), but I'm hoping to run it again this year.

I discovered the song "Rolling in the Deep" by Adele yesterday (click here for the video if it doesn't work below), and it was instant love.  What a great song!

Naturally I wanted it on my iPod for this weekend, and OF COURSE iTunes was being difficult.  A couple of months ago, I cleaned off my laptop to prepare it to be upgraded to Windows 7.  That involved deauthorizing my account for that iTunes, which means that now it doesn't recognize my iPod shuffle, and the only option to get the song on my iPod was to erase my entire iPod library and start from scratch.

I'm not sure who designed that, but it's a pretty big design flaw to me!  Luckily Marek told me that other programs, namely Winamp (hello, college days!), lets you add things to your iPod without wiping it out, so crisis averted!!  Of course now iTunes doesn't recognize my iPod at all, and now wants to restore it back to factory settings...  

Minus 10 million points for Apple.