Tomorrow officially begins marathon training!!! I don't know why, but I'm seriously excited to begin training!

Earlier this year I trained for the Olathe Marathon which was cancelled at the last minute due to severe weather. Well, they gave us the choice of transferring our entry fee to the 2009 Kansas City Marathon or the 2010 Olathe Marathon. I chose KC because who knows what will be going on in March 2010!

I've always wanted to do the KC Marathon because duh, its my city!!! It is also extremely hilly!!! This could be why I've put it off until now. But I am definitely up for the challenge, especially since I have my original marathon training partner back! Brooke went through an incredibly challenging pregnancy that resulted in our amazing baby Jack (check out his big ol' chunky blog for new chunky pics!) but also left Brooke barely able to walk around the block without gasping for air. She's made such progress since then and is ready to take on her third marathon! Woo Hoo!

We'll be using Hal Higdon's Novice 2 marathon plan as seen here: http://www.halhigdon.com/marathon/novices2.htm. We are also planning on adding some weekly hill workouts to get us ready for 26.2 miles through the hilly streets of Kansas City. I'm so pumped, it's going to be awesome!

And, just to be nerdy for a second... I'm super excited to see that the Kansas City Marathon is going green this year! They are providing online paperless registration (who doesn't do this anyway???), recycling bins on the course (you go through a lot of paper cups!), and are providing a ride-share program for people to carpool to the race. There has really been a push in the running community to be make racing more environmentally friendly and I'm excited to participate in a race that is taking steps in that direction!