Friday, April 15, 2011

32 Going on 13(.1)

After weeks of quietly training, I finally signed up for the Decker's Creek Trail Half Marathon. The race is on June 4th, and I am simultaneously excited and terrified. 13.1 miles is a long distance to run, but I feel confident that I can do it. I just hope I don't win the caboose award for bringing up the rear.

Of course, I will be completing, not competing. I do have a goal time in mind, but that is plan B. Plan A is just to finish. I read a lot of runners' blogs, and I can't help but compare my slow running times to their much speedier ones. Not to mention all of the seriously fast runners who will be running the half marathon that day, who will probably be showered and on their way home by the time I finish. It's going to be very hard, but I'm going to try to only focus on myself, how I feel, and the goal at hand -- just to do it.

Brad, who has been sidelined for the last few weeks with a knee injury and is missing the beginning of his race season as we speak, helped me set up a training plan for the 8 weeks leading up to the race. This week was week 1 of his plan, and so far I've been doing well.

Week 1 Training:
Monday - Yoga
Tuesday - 3 miles intervals
Wednesday - 3 miles steady (I actually ran intervals this day instead)
Thursday - 3 miles intervals (I actually ran steady / tempo on this day)
Friday - Blissful rest!
Saturday - 9 miles
Sunday - 3 miles easy / recovery

You will see that this plan has me running 5 days a week, and before I had been running 3 or 4 and taking at least two complete rest days per week. It's going to be hard, but everything in life worth doing is hard.

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