My Half-Half Marathon

Not too much to report from this weekend. Today is my second off day of the week (or first off day of the new week, depending on how you count your weeks) and I have spent much of the day sitting on the couch watching football and catching up on some reading. I have maybe 4 books I’m reading right now and I’ve been very neglectful of them the past few months. I’m going to try to be better about sitting down and getting through them before Christmas, since the holidays always bring me 5-6 new books for the winter hibernation period. This is in addition to the daily reading I have to do for work.

Anyway, Friday I did not run because I’d run everyday that week save for Tuesday. I was tired and needed to refresh my legs before Saturday’s long run.

Saturday I got up and dropped Annie off at the bus station for her trip to New York for the day. I came back and eventually willed myself to get my long run in before the WVU game at 11. I did 6.6 miles at an easy pace and felt good the entire time. I took hydration breaks at 2, 4 and 6 miles. So, I ended up running half the distance of a half marathon (the illustrious “half-half”) in about 1:12:00. I’m happy with that, as I’m mostly concerned with distance at this point and have yet to even start any sort of speed workouts into my week. That will come at some point in the coming months, I imagine. For now, I’m happy using my easy runs to ramp up my speed ever so slightly and will continue with that for a while.

I’m really happy that I’ve been able to get to the point where I can run almost 7 miles at an easy pace. It’s only been three months since I started really running seriously, so I think that progress is pretty positive. If I can stay focused going into this racing season, I should be in good shape. I’d like to end the season with a 10K (there’s one in Washington in November I may sign up for).

So, this week coming up is going to be busy at work but I should be able to stay on task and get my normal 4 days of 3.85 miles and long run in. Annie has a performance on Saturday afternoon, followed by a wedding in the evening, so I’m going to have to get my long run done in the morning, more than likely. I may keep it at 6.6 miles again, and then ramp up to 4 mile easy runs and 7 mile long runs next week. We’ll see.