13.1 Miles!?!? Crap.

Kristi, author of one of my favorite blogs, Interrupted Wanderlust, asked me to post something about how my half marathon training is going. I had one thought … “Oy …”

After Tabby was born, I was pretty lucky. First, I only had one kid, second she slept through the night from about 2.5 months onward. I worked out, I ate right and I lost my baby weight (and some more). It was … well maybe not easy, but predictable anyhow. At some point in time, I decided it would be a good idea to run a 9K. I signed up, I trained, and I did it, with little problem and even a decent time.

This go around, nothing has been predictable. Ben still does not routinely sleep through the night. There are two kids to handle. We have done a basement remodel. Matt has traveled a lot. I have had a huge freelance project in addition to my regular job. I have been busier since Ben was born than ever before in my life.

Bottom line, weight is coming off, but so slowly I could scream some days. This, as you might guess, does not make me a particularly gifted runner or extremely motivated. But I do have one thing: stubbornness. I am very stubborn and pretty hard working as well. So I am keeping at it and I fully expect to make it all 13.1 miles on April 24 (Ben's first b'day!!!). I may not do it at a gallop or a jog, but I will do it. As of today, my longest run w/o breaks (since Ben was born) was on Friday, a full 5 miles in a bit more than an hour. The beauty part was I felt like I could go longer. I stopped because I ran out of time, not steam. This is a big change for me. I had been working hard with little progress (in the way of mileage or speed) for a long time, so I made the decision to stop running at what I thought was my minimal pace (around 5 MPH – and yes, I know how pathetic this sounds to real runners) and drop it down quite a bit, to between 4.5 and 4.8, depending on the day. That sounds really slow, but for me (5' 0″, short legs?), it is still a jog, but I can SUSTAIN it. I have been doing that for a couple of weeks and I can successfully run at least 3 miles every time, and when I have the time, more.

Slowly, the mileage is coming up. And I am doing hill work, at about a 4% grade for 1 min intervals as I can in order to up my speed and my endurance. It was 5 miles last week, I want to make it at least 6 miles this week, and add as I can after that. If I can maintain the +1 mile/week that most marathon training programs recommend, I could maybe run the entire thing. I do have an advantage of going from high elevation to low. But I am definitely not going to push myself so hard as to injure myself. My main goal is to finish … under 3 hours would be great, but really I'm not picky. This will not be my last half marathon.