Training is getting serious now.

I just registered.

For the Leapfrog Half-Marathon in two weeks.

Those girls? That's totally going to be Kori and me.

See you do a half-marathon leapfrogging over each the whole time.

Okay, not really, but kinda.

It's a half marathon where at the start one person starts off biking and the other running and then the biker leaves the bike on the course and starts running and the runner picks it up and bikes ahead of the now runner and you keep doing this for 13.1 miles.

Here is the crazy part for obsessive planners like Kori and me - you can leave the bike any darn well place you please along the course. It's like doing a relay without set exchange zones. This pretty much has overloaded our brains with strategery. Is it better to do short intervals so you can run faster or to do longer intervals so that you don't lose so much time transitioning and so that you can get in a groove?

I almost made a spreadsheet to figure out the optimal strategy.

But instead we are just going to practice doing 1.1 mile intervals and 2.2 mile intervals (the weird distances are so that it breaks down into 12 and 6 intervals for the race) and see which ends up faster. 1.1 mile intervals would be hard. It would be like doing 6 mile repeats where your only break in between is riding a bike for like three minutes.

This training will do us well the weekend after at the Great Ames Adventure Race. Here Kori and I have a bone to pick with a DNF from last year (due to mechanical issues on the bike).

So how much do I love only signing up for fun races like these and not training for anything big? Yeah, I have that half-marathon in September, but that will be fun no matter what and I am not training for it at the moment. I am really just letting my body dictate how long I am going to run and not forcing distance on it (right now it likes 2-3 miles). Running these short distances also means that I have been way more consistent and getting in four runs a week. I am also just getting it done in the morning when I wake up so there are no excuses later in the day. And I look forward to it every day too!

Tomorrow I am off to the podiatrist to see about some orthotics... The PF is still rearing its ugly head!