A Traveling Pants Universe

I am tucked in bed on a Wednesday night at 6PM. Not sure if I caught a cold, or a bug, or this is just my body telling me that I need to take a break and chill tonight, but not feeling very good at the moment. I decided it will be a good time to think about 3 months ahead of me and all the training I want to complete before Berlin Marathon 17. I ran my second 10K race this past weekend, and was very excited to get my time to under 50 minutes. My exact time was 49.51, and looking at my pace of 8.02 for 6 miles makes me incredibly proud and happy. A year ago, running a mile at 8.30 seemed pretty daunting. I knew it's going to be a nice race when I walked outside to drive to the start line, and I was not dying from humidity. Nevertheless, I decided to be cautious when I headed out on the course. I did not want to feel horrible on mile 2 and struggle for the remainder of the race, and seems like my strategy worked! It was a small and not super fast race, but still exciting to

It's been one month since London Marathon, and I am finally putting some words together to describe my experience there (procrastinating much?) Ever since completing Chicago in the Fall of 2016, I knew I want to try to run all 6 Major Marathons.   London is my absolute most favorite city in the world, so I had to run it as soon as possible. London is SO competitive to get into. I don't know if I will be ever able to run a 3.15 marathon (that's the championship time cut-off), and lottery chances are very very slim. So I decided to look for a charity to run London marathon with, and I found an organization named The Outward Bound Fund which helps kids from underprivileged backgrounds re-connect with life through nature. They organize trips and hikes and kayaking and other wilderness expeditions which I thought was a very cool way to help kids with. The people I worked with from the Fund have been nothing but lovely, so I am very happy with finding this great organization.

In twelve short days, I will be toeing the line of my second marathon. I am running London and I am super excited! My current running goal is to do all 6 Marathon Majors (Chicago, London, NYC, Berlin, Boston and Tokyo). I still have a long list to go in order to tick them all off as completed (I have done only Chicago up until now) but I am looking forward to this challenge. Running has really made me into a stronger, more focused, balanced, happier (and of course fitter) person :). I did not know until I started running in January 2016 (so a bit over a year ago) that I have so much discipline in me, and I still need to put more structure around my training! I can't wait to come to London (my absolute favorite place on earth) and take on those 26.2 miles. I am still quite unsure what my goal time is. I ran my first marathon in 4 hours and 2 minutes, so I definitely want to take my time to under 4 hours. Apart from that, I will see how I feel on the race day and either go out