time to begin the foolishness

With 8 weeks to go from couch potato to finishing 13.1 miles in whatever possible way I can (fortunately, the time limit for the half is the same as the full marathon!), I've come up with a training plan that goes against everything you read about proper training methodology.I'm going to call it the "dive into the ocean and head straight into the rip tide with underinflated arm floaties" training plan.

The theory is that my butt is guaranteed to be on that race course for approximately 3 hours, probably more because of the hills (just look at the elevation chart below!).  I mean let's get real - even at my best, I only ran a half in 2.5 hours because I'm a slow runner, and the last ones I completed without any advance training were run/walk events with goal finish times of 3 hours (so a 14 min pace).  Plus those were relatively flat courses.

So last night, my insane brain (which I believe is deserving of a spot in mensa because I'm that awesome) figured out that it's not physically possible for me to catch up to where I should be in my running training program -- see genius!!  But if I have to be out there on the course for awhile, then I can condition my body to not freak the "F" out over 3 hours of exercise.  So it's time for me to become best buddies again with my elliptical trainer because we have a lot 90+ minute workouts on the schedule for the upcoming week, in addition to some outdoor runs in order to wake all those muscles up too.  So what to do for 90 minutes in one spot??  What else but start a Veronica Mars marathon!  90 min = 2 episodes.  And after those three seasons, I have all five seasons of Friday Night Lights to watch! In a sick way, I'm kind of looking forward to all this exercise...