run a half marathon

It took a lot of willpower to keep my pace, but I did and finished in 1:32. Its great to have people cheering through the home stretch. Never have my legs felt this worn down in my knees and hips, but since I took the day off from work I can relax and just ice.

Today, someone showed me the Google Pedometer. It is a hack that transforms google maps into a kind of exercise loop planner.

The picture here is a loop that I ran just this past monday. I plotted out the distance, and even the calories that I burned while at work!! Much better than having to drive the loop in my car. And now I can plan out routes ahead of time and taylor them to my workout program. NICE!!

I had a good run yesterday. Part of it was barefoot, and part was during a a storm where the drops stung because of the wind. Its nice when things are different every now and again.

Today’s big room was later in the day. I ran so far that I must have run at least 13 miles. The plan was to train with long run of 8-10 and then try to put the extra effort in on race day. When I measure how long it was with my car, we will see. Did I reach the goal if I ran as far as a half marathon? Do I have to run the actual race? I think I will anyway, but I might as well reward myself with a job well done by checking off the goal.

Update

The unofficial results for that run are in, and I ran 12.85 miles for 1h 47min. I was short of the official half-marathon distance I’m afraid. I was able to estimate my pace by remembering the song that was playing at a certain distance and calculating the songs depth in my playlist. Since “Sultans of Swing” by Dire Straits finished at mile 9, that puts me at around 1h 22min at about 15k into the run.

Hit some buttons on the calculator and we have a 9.1 min/mile pace, which isn’t too shabby. Hit some more buttons and my pace for the whole run was 8:20min/mile. Of course, this means that my estimates suck.

Lets assume I was under 10min/mile, and need to get a stopwatch.

Today was the day I had kinda planned to run a 15k. I never did send in my registration. Something about getting up at like 5 to drive a few hours just so I could preregister didn’t appeal. To make up for my lack of ambition, I ran about 9 miles on my usual circuit through the hills.

I didn’t stop to walk at all, and my knees didn’t really bother me until the very end. Since I could run a 15k, the extra four miles to a half marathon don’t seem very daunting. Nothing to stop me now!!!

Today was the first day of running in the morning. I rolled outta bed at 6. How long can I keep this going?

I finished my first week of my new training plan. I took Hal Higdon’s novice plan for a half marathon and squished weeks 5-10 together to get a three week 15k program. I just finished an 8 mile run that puts me at 21.5 miles + 2 days of x-training this week.

I had kinda hoped to run the Brooklyn half-marathon on July 10. I think I will play it a bit safer, since I plan to continue to climb after the race is over. The boilermaker, the largest 15k race there is, is on July 10th. I just grabbed the last two weeks of the novice training program for a 15k from Hal’s website.

So the 15k will buy me a little bit of time before the half-marathon. Which one should I do?

I came up with a running program, and so far I have been sticking to it…doing more than I said I would, really. I looked around and found at least on half-marathon in the area. If I want to, I can go for the 13.2 mile half marathon instead of settling for the 15k race. What should I do?

Ran a 5 mile trail race today. Out of at least 35 people I finished 8th with a time of 41:31. When I finished, I was exhausted, sore, and covered in mud. There were three giant hills that took everything I had. I’m sad to say I did have to walk a bit on the last one (but I think everyone else did as well).

I found a 15k run at the end of July (less than a half marathon, but a close enough substitute). I think that will be the big test. Now I need to come up with a training plan!

The first step is finding one. I have already begun training, though I don’t have a formal training program. I just go out and run for a while. I will be doing a 5-mile run next weekend so I can gauge how my conditioning is. That will give me an idea of what kind of timetable I am looking at. I think I should be able to handle one by the end of July. I could run one now and finish, but I don’t think I would feel too good about it.

I need to find a good training program. To improve my diet and my sleep. I have to locate a race, and then just do it.