Half Marathon Training Update

Wow! Putting my first half marathon on the calendar was EXACTLY what I needed to kick start the motivation that I felt completely leave my body coming into this year. What’s more is I’m no longer an anti-training plan monger…I can’t say I’ve been sticking to mine exactly, but having something laying out what I need to do, how fast, how long, etc is a nice change from just going out and Forest Gump’n it!

I only gave myself 8 weeks to prep and have missed each weeks training mileage by about 3 miles. This week I have kicked it into high gear. The weather is finally a bit nicer, although most of my runs still resemble this:

I just did a 10 miler this morning and tomorrow’s 5 will make this a 27 mile week. That’s the most mileage I’ve run in a week yet! My feet are feeling stronger than ever. The year and a half of running in my Vibram FiveFinger’s and taking it SLOW are starting to show the results in the muscular strength of my feet. In general, I’m feeling really strong right now aside from the occasional excessive fatigue that still builds in my calves. I’m running a little heavy coming out of winter too. My weight crept up to 183lbs and I really feel best at 175lbs so I’ll pay attention to my food quantity intake the next few weeks and hopefully be at fighting weight for the Danbury Half Marathon.

Targeting for the Danbury Half Marathon
I used the running calculator over at McMillan Running to predict a target Half Marathon time. Using a 23 minute 5k as a gauge for what would be a really fast 5k for me at this time, the tool says my targeted half is 1:46:19 or 8:07 minute miles. That seems like a stretch goal for me and my personal target for the race is 8:20 minute miles or 1:49:00 total time. It’s the damned elevation gain from miles 6 through 9 that will be the true challenge.

Looking forward to completing the training plan and progressively hitting an 11 miler, 12 miler, and the race day 13.10!