Chapter 456 - Jake Vacations 8 (1/2)

So Jake's next days were a lot of training with trainer Davis, in which Jake increased his daily training to 45 km which was the maximum he could handle today, even so, he was very happy with the satisfactory training he was having.

On those days Jake also invited Kate to go out with him almost every day and as long as he felt that she enjoyed meeting with him, Jake would continue to ask almost every day, and it seemed that Kate enjoyed these meetings as much as he did.

Jake took Kate to several restaurants that had different menus and always for lunch, Jake also always sent flowers, chocolates, and stuffed animals as gifts to Kate's hotel, and it seemed that she liked that too.

After a few weeks, Jake started taking Kate to other types of dates like going to the movies, to the theater, to the park to have a picnic, to the beach and to various places that Jake knew and wanted to share with Kate.

After several weeks of dating, Jake thought he liked Kate even more and also knew her a lot more than before and so Jake thought he made the right decision to go out on several dates with her before asking her to date with him.

Jake's strategy was that even though he asked Kate to meet him several times, he never asked her to go to dinner with him, and he thought of asking her to go to dinner with him only when he intended to ask her to date him.

But before that the day of the Chicago marathon was approaching, Jake trained every day and no longer suffered from running at this intense pace the 45 km, of course, it would not be at this pace that Jake would run the Chicago marathon and therefore missing a week to the Jake marathon returned to his old training pace by running 50 km.

Running at his old pace Jake found it much easier and had almost no fatigue for himself running 50 km, but of course Jake knew it was necessary, Jake warned his mother and Kate that he was going to Chicago to run the marathon there and the two understood.

This time as he had time Jake went to Chicago two days before the marathon at a hotel he had booked for himself because it was the same hotel he went to compete in the marathon every year and Jake had become a VIP customer at that hotel.

Jake also made reservations at this hotel for Coach Davis who went with him from Miami and also for Zack and his former roommates who would come from the university to see Jake and Zack running in the marathon.

Jake missed his friends William and Aaron and of course Zack too, Jake invited Zack's family too, but everyone was busy and said they would go when Zack ran in a marathon closer to where they lived.

Zack could already run any marathon and finish, but his goal that year was to run a marathon in less than 3 hours, and since he had already agreed with Jake that he would go again to the Chicago marathon, he didn't want to risk running in another marathon that year to get tired.

But in the next few years, Zack didn't intend to go back to Chicago anymore and he would just run in cities in North Carolina and force his family to watch his marathons, Jake didn't think it was that serious because he didn't even ask his mother to watch his marathons.

This time, unlike in recent years, everyone expected Jake to participate in this marathon in Chicago because Jake had done it in recent years and now the NBA season was rarely happening.

Jake had just run the Tokyo marathon that year and had won well and everyone expected Jake to win that marathon again and perhaps break the world record, Adidas and Gatorade had sent sponsors to Chicago and so everyone was even more sure that Jake would run in Chicago.

Of course, the Chicago marathon organizers already knew that Jake was going to participate, but they wanted to keep it a secret because they knew that Jake didn't normally announce when he would run any marathon.

Jake was running for the first time with Adidas sneakers and Adidas clothes, as Jake was committed to sponsorship he was even wearing an Adidas bandana, this was also the first time he was free to talk about his sponsors.

That's because in his time at university, Jake was forbidden to speak on behalf of the companies that sponsored him because he could only receive sponsorship because the university had specifically allowed this for Jake.

With one day left before the Chicago marathon, Zack and the others finally arrived and met Jake at the hotel where they would stay, his friends were impressed with the hotel where they would stay.

”Hi my friends, I missed you in the last few months.”

”Hi Jake, we saw the NBA draft this year, congratulations on being the first pick and still playing for the Los Angeles Lakers.”

”It's true, it is said that the Los Angeles Lakers team had already negotiated with the Los Angeles Clippers team to choose Jake in the first pick, this is even more incredible.”

”Yes, it's a shame that the NBA season has been postponed and maybe it won't even happen, I miss watching the games.”