The week of my Awesome Half Marathon!

I’m feeling really good about my training at this point. Things seem to be going right – I hope that saying so doesn’t jinx it! The Half made it really clear that I need to do some hillwork, so I’ll plan on turning some of my M-pace runs into hill sessions. I’ll let you know how that goes!

Weekly Total: 34 miles

• Monday 11/9 (Rest)

• Tuesday 11/10 (5 miles Easy)
  5.11 miles / 48:00 / 9:27

  We were supposed to do the timed mile in class, but a lot of people were sick, so we just did a few miles on the track. Since my legs were kind of still recovering from yesterday’s class, I was glad to not have to do the mile test – I know I have improved since August and I want to be able to do my best!Other than that, an uneventful 5 miles.

• Wednesday 11/11 (6 miles Tempo)
  6.00 miles / 55:00 / 9:08
  I got to practice my rain-and-puddle-evasion technique. I have to say it didn’t help much. Still, I was proud of myself for dragging my legs out of their warm cozy covers at 6am and heading out into the torrential downpour that was the weather this morning. It’s a good thing I love running, or else convincing myself that a 6 mile tempo run was better than an hour of sleep in my dark room listening to the rain on the roof would have been really difficult.

• Thursday 11/12 (4 miles Marathon Pace)
  4.00 miles / 40:00 / 10:00
  An easy run on the treadmill in my running class – just keeping things loose for the run on Saturday!

• Friday 11/13 (Rest)
  Cue freaking out about the half tomorrow! I must have asked myself the question “Why did I not actually train for this? What was I thinking?!?!” about a million times. Things turned out well, though, and now I feel better about my mental running strength knowing that I toughed out a really hard race and didn’t give up.

• Saturday 11/14 (Half Marathon at Walnut Creek – 13.1 miles)
  13.1 miles / 2:30:59 / 11:27
  
  Race report here

• Sunday 11/15 (6 miles Easy)
  5.5 miles / 55:00 / 10:00

  No Charlottesville Trail Running Club group run today – since all of the “regulars” did the half the day before, no one was really feeling up for a group run on the trails. I was happy to hit the road, though, and give my legs a good stretching post-race. Nothing like a nice 5+ miler to get things feeling good again!