run a half marathon

after weeks of training i ran my first half-marathon today and finished in 2:09:39. i wanted to finish in less that 2:15 so i was thrilled. in fact, if i had not been running late getting there in the morning and thus been able to use the bathroom before the race started and if i had not lost my mp3 player (it fell out of it’s holder) three times during the race, i think i would have been close to breaking 2 hours.

i’ve already signed up for my first marathon and i will start training tomorrow.

this thing was so worth doing.

i ran my first race of longer than 5k yesterday. it was a 10 miler and i finished it in 1:36:30 (a 9:39/mile pace). i could have gone farther by the end of the race and maintained that pace. things will only improve by the half-marathon i am registered for on january 14th. this one is going to be done.

i’ve been running between 20 and 30 miles per week for about a month now. my long run is usually around 12 miles so i know that i can finish the distance of the half-marathon when i race it in january. now i just need to improve my time. next saturday i have a 10 mile race. this should help to get a feeling for the race itself.

today i start the sixth week of the 12 week coolrunnning.com hhalf marathon training program. i am feeling pretty good about things. i’ve been running extra miles on my long runs. this means that last week instead of 8 miles i ran 8.7 miles. my body still feels good and i am enjoying running more and more. i feel so good with my training that i may go and ahead and run the baton rouge beach half marathon. my training program will actually be finished three weeks before and baton rouge beach half marathon so this will be good maintence and improvement before the first light half marathon.

i signed up for the first light half marathon earlier today. i now have a date (1/14/07) for my mission. let the training commence!

i’m going to run a half marathon with my brother-n-law and his wife. it’s the first light half marathon in mobile, alabama. i’m excited about doing it. i had figured that i would run a 10k first but i can’t find one around during the time period.

so now this means that i move from the 5k races i have been doing to training for a half marathon. more miles!