Saturday

Had a hard time sleeping last night.

I just signed up to be away from my kids for five, yes, five nights in October.

I'm adding a couple extra days ahead of time to see family and friends.

I'll have a good time, but it's a long time - at least for me.

I'm terribly excited. Painfully excited. Yesterday I could barely get anything done as I was already thinking about my training.

After doing the marathon, I have a whole new respect and appreciation for training.

This time, I'm going to follow Hal Higdon's twelve week Intermediate plan for the Half Marathon. I also printed off the Novice, and if the Intermediate is too much, I'll switch gears without a backward glance.

I'm thinking with the altitude difference, speedwork and tempo runs won't hurt. I'm also going to try and incorporate a few hilly routes on the long run days.

For what it's worth, Denver is at 5280 ft, and Minneapolis is... 841 ft.

You, yes you out there - it's not too late to start training. Monday is twelve weeks out. Not interested in running? Hal had a walking plan as well... See you in Denver!