Half Marathon Training - Weeks 3 and 4

Howdy!  

Like the rest of the world, I am completely caught up in the Olympics. I had to take a break from them last night in order to get some much needed sleep since I have been staying up way later than normal this past week.

Of course I LOVED the women's marathon. I've been following Kara, Shalane and Desi's training since the Winter and was so excited to watch them run and completely heartbroken for Desi. Even though there were no USA medals, these ladies made me so proud.

Love these teammates!

These past couple of weeks have been the epitome of balance. Everything seems to be coming to a head lately and trying to balance my home, my work and my running have been pretty challenging over the past 2 weeks.

Let me just say that I love my husband. Despite the fact that he is at work is 80+ hours per week, he still makes it a priority to make it home for me to go on my scheduled runs. He knows as well as I do that being able to get my run in is essential to my mental well-being - especially when work and home are equally demanding.

I have to say, I think I put in 2 solid weeks of running.

Half Marathon Training - Week 3

Week 2 was fine despite only being able to run 3 of the 7 days.  My second speed work session went pretty well. It consisted of 1 mile warm up, 6x45sec @ Zone 4 with 1min30sec recovery, and a 1 mile cool down. My splits felt pretty good for me (9:15, 8:22, 8:38, 8:32, 7:21, 8:00). My long run was 8 miles through downtown Durham which just so happened to be the first part of the half marathon course.

Half Marathon Training - Week 4

This past week had some pretty average runs in it. I have been thinking about the remainder of this training cycle and how I might want to switch some things up....a topic for a different post. Sunday's long run was supposed to be 7 miles but I got caught up with the women's Olympic marathon and got out the door too late. It was was just way to hot. At one point I stopped to get a pebble out of my shoe and realized my skirt was sagging almost halfway down my thighs. It was pretty...

All in all I feel like training is going ok. I also feel like it could be better. I have some thoughts on how to go about that.