Chicago marathon?

My daughter spent the afternoon at a friends house. When I went to pick her up, the mom, Tonya, came out and said she's been thinking all day about how she wants to run the Chicago marathon. It's in October. She ran it a few years ago and loved it. She's not allowed to run yet (had knee surgery a month or two ago), but she's dying to get back on the road. I told her that I plan to run a fall marathon but I haven't decided on which one yet. She smiled saying Chicago is flat and fast, and her daughter squealed all excited "can Kyra go too???". The happy feelings were all around, so I said it sounded like a great idea.We had planned to run the Disney Marathon together this past January, but she had to bail because of her torn meniscus, and I decided to drop out because I took too much time off after my first marathon in late October, and couldn't easily come up with a solution of a babysitter for Kyra while I ran a race that I really wasn't prepared for. So, Chicago sounds like fun!

My sister and I had talked a few weeks ago about running a marathon together. She was on the fence about it. We looked at a few that aren't too far of a drive, but didn't decide on anything. They are in November and December. She's not 100% committed to it because of the large amount of time it takes to train for a marathon.

So, my thought is that if Tonya is able to run, I'll set up my training schedule to run Chicago with her on October 11th. And this year, I'll put in a lot more base miles prior to the marathon training start so I won't need so much time to recover. If my sister decides to do one of the marathons we were looking at, Space Coast Marathon (November 29th) or Kiawah Island (December 12th), I would have 6-8 weeks of time to recover and be able to do one of those too. Wow, that sounds insane...

When we left Tonya's house, I took Kyra to her swim lesson at Mountain Park Aquatic Center. After signing her in, I went for a jog around the complex. I've never gone running here but have seen what I thought was a trail. It's slightly over a half-mail asphalt trail loop of rolling hills. I enjoyed it, but got bored with it after four laps. So I only ran 2.08 miles, then grabbed my Runner's World magazine and went inside to watch the end of Kyra's swim lesson.