The Mad Marathon Countdown is ON!

It's a mad, mad world and that's why I went rogue and signed up for the Mad River Marathon in Vermont, coming up on July 6th. Rogue, because Coach suggested I bump down to the half, given my training plan has me running only 14 miles by race day; but I secretly jacked up my training schedule so that I could run the full marathon as planned. Shhhh! Don't tell him.
 

A few months ago when  Silly Rabbit, AKA SRab, AKA Carol, told me she was doing this mad, mad marathon, I just knew I was mad enough to do it!  After all, it's billed as The World's Most Beautiful Marathon:

 You will be running through this extraordinary rural community on back and
dirt roads, with breathtaking views of the Green Mountains, challenging rolling
farmlands with tough climbs and descents, quaint villages, historic barns, covered
bridges and fields of our famous Vermont cows!

What's not to love?

 Well....

Lots of hillz -- in fact, this may be the hilliest marathon I've ever run! However, I endured 50 miles of hills at Can Lake, so I'm going to let the hills of the Mad River Valley be someone else's problem.

That's not to say it will be easy. Between long weekend swims and lots of travel, my longest training run was17 miles this past Saturday. So yeah, Coach was probably right about the mileage situation....

But I'll just keep telling myself it's only a training run....only a training run...