New Plan: Half Marathon!

So back in March, I was disappointed to learn that registration for the 2011 Chicago Marathon had reached maximum participants.  Last year's 5K was waaaay too fun for me to not run another race, but I knew I had to aim for a longer distance in order to really challenge myself.  After a quick survey of my friends on Facebook, I learned that several people were already registered for the half in September- and I decided to go ahead and register, too!  I found two 10 week HM training programs (one is from Runner's World magazine!) and am almost done with week 1 :)

As an experiment, I decided to see just how bad it really would be to run at lunchtime on Tuesday.  And I learned exactly why you either run early morning or late evening: 86 degrees with a TON of humidity and lots of sun made for a miserable half hour.  Yuck.  Never again.

Yesterday I ran around 8:15am.  It was partly cloudy, about 76 degrees and much less humid.  It was a GREAT run except for one thing: my thighs were chafing something fierce!  I'm slightly knock-kneed, so chafing is pretty much unavoidable.

I'm the one on the left - my thighs touch by default

It's super frustrating, because my knees, ankles and lungs were handling the 3-miler just fine, but my legs were objecting painfully.  I still have a Nike giftcard from Christmas so I'm going to the outlet mall this afternoon to see if I can find some compression/lycra shorts so they'll stay in place even if my running shorts ride up!

I'm also going to see if the Nike outlet has any competition-style swimsuits.  My gym has a pool so I'd love to swim laps or take the "aqua fit" class as part of my cross-training, but the only swimwear I have are bikinis.  We'll see if the Nike outlet has what I need or if I'll have to look elsewhere!

My best motivation for morning runs is to set out my shorts, tank, sports bra and socks before I go to bed- what do you do to get up and go?