Another Week of Running

Today I finished Week 4 of Half-Marathon Training. The farthest I have ever run, and the most consistent I have every been in a training program. Let's recap this week:

Sunday - 2.5 mile recovery walk/run

Tuesday - 2.2 mile run and .3 mile hill walk

Wednesday - "Loredo" cross-fit workout (Sprint 1/4 mile, 24 squats, 12 push-ups, and arm workout x 4) - so 1 mile ran

Friday - 3.2 mile run

Saturday - 7 miles (5 miles on the treadmill, 2 outside)

Phew! That is a 16.2 mile week. :)

After tomorrow's short recovery run/walk, I start back into a challenging mix of maintaining my running schedule while working this week AND sending husband back to work. Since I work Tuesday-Thursday, I find myself doing my 3 mile runs on Monday and Friday. Then, on Wednesday (after work, after dinner, after flag football, baths, and bed for the kids) I will head to the gym and crank out some miles on the treadmill. I'm really not sure how many I will do. At least 3, put I'm aiming for 5. Today I did 5 in an hour, and I was not bored or overly exhausted. I figure I'll give it another shot on Wednesday and up my miles for the week before hitting a long run of 8 miles on Saturday.

Next week's long run on Saturday marks the official 4 week countdown to my race, which is on March 2nd. I'll run 8 miles, then 10 miles, then 11 miles, then taper with a local 8k (5 mile) race the Saturday before my race. Shockingly, I'm getting faster. Today, mile one (warm-up mile) was right about 12:50 pace (not bad  considering there was 5 minutes of walking built into that first mile). Miles 2 and 3 were at 12:10, and 12:07. Then miles 4 and 5 were both at the 11:30 mark. I need to work on pacing myself outside but now that I know I can run faster, I'm going to do it for sure! My goal of finishing all 13.1 miles of my half-marathon under 3 hours seems very doable. In fact, I'm going to go out on a limb and say I'd really LOVE to finish in 2:30 or under.