Welcome!

Hi everyone, and welcome to our running blog! (Though Toni beat me to the first post :) ) A couple of months ago, Toni had the great idea of the four of us running a half marathon together. I wasn't very hopeful that it would come together, because all of our schedules are pretty busy. But after a few rounds of suggestions, we picked a half marathon: the St. Jude Memphis Half Marathon on December 5th! I get the song "Walking in Memphis" in my head whenever I think about the race. But hopefully we'll be doing more running than walking in Memphis!

I was thinking about doing the Hal Higdon intermediate half marathon training program (or dropping back to novice if intermediate was too tough). It's a 12-week plan, so I would start the official training plan in mid-September. I have heard lots of good things about Hal Higdon's training programs, and the basic information is available online for free. But then I discovered a training group for the Atlanta Half Marathon on Thanksgiving. I think I'm going to join that group, since our race is only nine days after the Atlanta Half Marathon. The first group run is on August 29, and we'll run together for 13 Saturdays. I don't know what kind of training plan they will provide, but I'm looking forward to having a group to run with!

In the meantime, I'm running the Peachtree Road Race on Saturday, the 4th of July. The Peachtree is a 10K and with 55,000 runners is one of the largest road races in the world. This will be my third time running the Peachtree, and it is always a lot of fun. Of course, the vast crowds make the roads tough to navigate, but once I get over that, it's like a moving party! There are live bands and DJs, as well as tons of spectators, all along the route. Last year my sister and I ran together, and we were doing the "YMCA" dance around mile 2! This year, I was randomly placed into the very last starting group, so I will be starting around 9 am. Ugh, it will be hot at that hour! But other than the heat, I am looking forward to the race! I will update after the Peachtree!