In a little less than two weeks I’ll be resting, celebrating (hopefully) a successfully completed half-marathon. Two weeks. That isn’t much time.

That said, the last couple weeks have been a training hell. I was sick with some sort of sinus-slash-respiratory infection, the kind where just breathing at the wrong sort of angle knocks you sideways and you end up doubled over and coughing until you thing you’re either going to lose your lungs or your lunch.

I mostly recovered from that. In fact, I’m still not at one hundred percent, and forced myself to get back on the training routine, clocking in a modest fifty-plus klick week that included some moderate jaunts, a speed workout, a fast-tempo run, and — yesterday — a twenty kilometers Sunday morning long-slow-distance run.

The lung infection caught up with me in a serious way right around click eighteen, and it took me a few minutes to catch my breath and keep going. But I rolled into the parking lot a mere few minutes behind the five pace-buddies I’d been tracking for the first couple hours, and was only a little worse for wear.

The route was very nice, though. The thing about our long Sunday runs is the tourism aspect:

Yesterday, we got out the local neighborhood in a serious way, pulling into (and then back out of) the river valley and meandering almost into another quadrant of the city. Our trek took us under the Anthony Henday bridge, up into nearby Cameron Heights, up into Callingwood, and then back down near Fort Edmonton wherein we performed an epic climb out of the valley and back into the familiarity of our regular locale for the last few clicks back to the shed. By that point, the early morning fog that had greeted us for the first half of the run had burnt off, leaving us traipsing through the blistering heat of a warm August Sunday morning.

This whole adventure has put my training total up at the 590 KM mark, which is stupidly impressive (if I dare say so) and has inspired yet another act of silly and wanton goal-setting.

Astute readers may have noticed I’ve changed the title of this, the latest in what used to be called “the art of running” series on this blog; Why, you may ask?

Something we’d been pondering officially came to pass last night. I registered in another half marathon, this one in December… and this one in Las Vegas. That’s right: let the era of running vacations begin.

The “strip at night” Las Vegas Rock ‘n’ Roll Half Marathon is an early evening, all-lit-up run down the Las Vegas strip. There is music. There will be twenty-thousand people running. And it’s going to be insane. Karin and I booked a weekend vacation package, and will be getting away for a few days of child-free fun leading into what looks to be an amazing gallop through the neon glow of the Las Vegas scene.

This, of course, means that I have yet another four months of training to look forward to — and another four months of training updates as I log even more klicks before Vegas. The first half is yet to happen, but something tells me that the big event in two weeks is now just a warm up to the lucky run a little later this year.