Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Ten miles on the horizon

I've made a decision. I will start training for my half-marathon on Monday. That will give me 12 weeks to properly train for the half-marathon, which is scheduled for Sunday, April 19 in Redlands.

I have a training schedule that I'll use as a base and while it still needs some tweaking to fit my specific needs, the long distance runs will remain intact.

I'll have more of the schedule itself here later this week but the part that scares me the most right now is the end of the third week. See, every Saturday will be long-distance run. It breaks down into five days of running and two rest days, and the longest runs will be on Saturdays.

At the end of week three, I will have to run 10 miles. I've never ran 10 miles before. I've only ran seven. That's the longest distance I've run before and it's been a while since I did that. But this plan is perfect for me I think since seven is a little more than half of the distance I'll need to run on April 19.

There are multiple double-digit runs in the training schedule so my second one won't be as daunting as the first, but that first one sure seems intimidating. It's scheduled for Feb. 14 so hopefully that won't be my own personal Valentine's Day Massacre.

As for the rest of this week, I'm not exactly taking it off. I will run intervals today and will get out to the gym once more this week and hopefully I'll get in some mileage on Saturday to sort of replicate the Saturday training regiment. Not sure yet how many miles I'll try and get in but I've got to get something in.

After that, then, everything will take on a bit of a heightened importance. Not that these miles aren't important - they are, each and every one of them -but when you're training for something, I don't know, it just seems like you place a bit more significance and at least you pay a lot more attention into those miles.

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