Leapfrog

Saturday morning, my friend Matt Harbert and I competed in the 3rd Annual Leapfrog Half Marathon Ride & Run. Now you may be asking yourself, "What is a Leapfrog Ride & Run?" Taken directly from their website: 2 contestants enter with 1 bicycle. Everyone starts the race at the same time. One teammate rides ahead and leaves the bike for his/her partner and begins running. The partner runs to the bike and then rides past (leapfrogs) their partner and drops the bike at some point for the partner. The process repeats as many times as necessary for the team to complete the course. First complete team around the course (13.1 miles) and across the finish line wins. Team must finish together! No support crews allowed. Cars discouraged along route. No drafting on bikes. Stay on right side of road.

This was a nice little race in Dallas Center, which was having their fall festival, Dallas Center Celebrations. Dallas Center is a small town, so the route headed out of town, made a loop and then came back into town. The start of the race was pretty memorable. The "race director" made an announcement for all the "Leapfroggers" to follow him, we walked up a side street and were standing there and he announced "OK, GO" I was not prepared for the start, in fact I think I was still discussing strategy, but the race was underway so I started running! The bikes took off and so did the runners.

Matt and I came up with a plan to go longer intervals before exchanging the bike, it worked out that he rode out 3.25 miles and then dropped the bike, I ran to it and picked it up and rode 3 miles then dropped the bike, he got to it and rode 3.85 miles and dropped it and then I rode the last 3 to the finish.Here we are shortly after the finish of the race, apparently our plan worked great because we finished in 1st place with a time of 57.45.
We had some tough competition in Ryan and Ben, they finished second around 59 mins. Pictured from left to right, Ryan, Matt, myself and Ben.
Ryan and Ben trying to relive high school glory days, we snapped a quick senior picture pose. They get the "A" for effort award, Ryan was even bleeding trying to keep up with us.
Matt and I receiving our 1st place trophies! These are some rare photo's because Matt can be seen actually wearing running shorts instead of his usual basketball attire! All smiles after the race.