Hello again people. I've got big news! After years of begging (literally), my daddy finally agreed to enter me in a real race! He calls it a "marathon," the Free State Trail Marathon in Lawrence, Kansas to be exact. I don't know what that means, other than I get to go a really long ways. Anyway, I'm so excited about it, and wanted to share the experience with you all.

Here goes.

So I have been training. In fact I've been training so hard that I haven't had time to blog. Lucky for all of us, this training is going better than that training that my parents tried on me a while back. You know, that "sit" and "lay down" routine. That didn't work so well on me. This, however, is going awesome. I get to run 5 or 6 times a week! And sometimes it seems like I get to run forever!

Last weekend I went on my longest run ever - 19 miles. It was awesome. Daddy woke me up at about 4:30 in the morning. Normally, I like to sleep until 7:00 or so in the morning (that is necessary for me to get in my usual 16+ hours of sleep a day), but for a run I'm happy to get up at whatever unheard of hour. I never really know how far I'm going that day, unless daddy has on his water bottle belt and the special cup he brings for me to drink out of. When I see that, I know we are in for a long one. And I get even more excited. Well, today was one of those "water bottle belt and cup days," so I whimpered extra hard so he knew I wanted to go.

Right before we started, Daddy's friend Krystle showed up, and she would run with us the entire way. We left the house, and went out on our normal course. It was a lovely pre-morning. I couldn't see anything because it was so dark, but the smells of spring were awesome.

We went past my usual turn-around after 2 miles (for a 4 mile run), and then past the place were we turn around to run 10 miles, and then we go farther than anyone has ever gone before! It was like 10 miles before we ever turned around! So then we headed back. Because our time was running short (it was Easter, after all), we had to cut off a mile on our way back. That was fine, at the end I still managed to run 19 miles! I was sooooo happy!

Then I napped.

So I'm entered into my first marathon, and my daddy says this is a good one. He has as run it several times - he showed me his medals to prove it. And I am so excited to get one of those, I'll wear it everywhere and all the dogs in the 'hood will be so jealous! Anyway, he said that it is a very fun event, with some great people, and a great relatively flat and fast course. More important to me is that it is welcoming to dogs. He says that there are always a couple of dogs in the race. I'm not really worried about beating them. Really I'm just excited about being welcomed.