A Girl and Her Blog

I am about to do the relatively unthinkable. I am going to train for a half marathon in a mere nine weeks.

Am I crazy? Maybe. But last year I did it in 10 weeks. Was I in shape enough to go the whole 13.1 miles without stopping? Hell no. Did I finish? You bet I did! And that’s all I’m looking for again this year. I want to finish. And I kind of want to beat my time too. But more importantly finish.

Yesterday was day one of training. Since I've procrastinated training until yesterday, I'm down to only nine weeks when normal people allow themselves 10-15. But I'm not really all that normal.

I used yesterday as a "Test day" to gague how crazy I actually am. I set the goal of 2.5 miles on the treadmill (the training schedule I stole off the internet requires me to have a baseline of 3 miles), and plugged away at it. It was hard, but manageable and I think I'm prepared for three miles today. The first mile was a killer.

Last time I ran was probably a good eight weeks ago. I ran 5K for Race for the Cure back in mid-september, and I believe I busted out one more 2.5 mile run after that. Did I mention that a half marathon is more than five times that distance?

Since I'm working off of the Modified Crazy Casey training schedule, I pretty much had to skip the first week of "easy" runs. Instead of my first long run being 4 miles, I'm already expected to bust out 5 on Sunday! I keep telling myself that last year I did it, and I'm in slightly better shape now, but it still feels daunting.

That's why I'm looking to unload some anxieties and hesitations out into the blogosphere. I'm ready to bare it all to strangers. My triumphs, my failures, my frustrations, my every emotion that I could possibly feel through this. And when it's all done...I'm going to do it all again! My goal for this year is to not run one, but two, possibly three, half-marathons. I'm starting with the one, but I don't want the same thing to happen that happened last year - I took a three week break from running, ran two 3 milers, then took another eight week break. Not exactly the running champ I thought I would become.

So I'm going to make myself keep doing it! There are several half-marathon events in my area throughout the year, all I need to do is pick a few that are a few months apart, and I'm golden. I figure I'll continue to train with the same schedule (except go for the whole 10 weeks!), unless I feel it's too easy. Which let's face it, I probably won't.