Reflection on Week 20 of 52

Weigh In: 206

After this week, I am a bit surprised I am down 3 lbs. I really thought I was hitting a plateau. I do think I still am though, because I've been somewhat bored with my workouts. This past week went really well. I accomplished the whole plan, except for Thursday, I didn't do the AM Yoga, no biggy though, I took a really long walk with hubby and Jorge. Food this week also went pretty well, I did snack outside of my plan on some chocolates, cashews, and a few extra glasses of wine, but nothing too bad.

At work on Wednesday, I noticed something on the printer. It was a half marathon training plan for novices. I glanced through it and then put it in the tray for it's owner. Thursday it was still sitting there. Friday, yep, still there. It sparked my interest again and I took it home. I've read through it a few times, thinking about wanting to change around my workouts and I think maybe this will be the way to go. I love running and about two and half years ago, I did the Couch to 5K training plan. It was great to build endurance. Now I am at about 2.5 miles three days a week.

This novice training plan for the half marathon I found came from Hal Higdon's website. The farthest race I have ever done is the Bolder Boulder 10K, which is a little over 6 miles. A half marathon is 13.1 miles. Now, you might be thinking I am crazy and yes, I am a little, but I am not doing this plan to the exact points. I will be doubling this training program, meaning that I am making his 12 week plan into a 24 week plan. I am taking it super slow.

One thing that I like about this plan is that Hal talks about walking and how important it is for a runner to incorporate walking. He states:

"Walking is an excellent exercise that a lot of runners overlook in their training. I don't specify walking breaks, but feel free to walk during your running workouts any time you feel tired or need to shift gears. When you go to the starting line in your twelfth week, nobody will care whether you run the full Half Marathon; they're more concerned that you finish! If this means walking every step in practice and in the race, do it!"

I think this is a great way to look at. I fully beleive in interval training, running five mintues, walking five minutes, etc and building endurance the whole time. On the treadmill I am up t0 running a full 30 minutes. However outside is a totally different story, I've only run 1.5 miles straight, which was about 13 minutes. I haven't tried anything further yet because we still have the membership, but slowly and surely I'll get there. It is a whole different animal being outside. Today Dan and I ran to the gym, which was 1.3 miles, did weights and core and then ran home. It was great. I felt totally fine. Plus it was so different running on pavement instead of gravel. I really like pavement a lot more. It seemed a bit easier, I don't know why.

Well, we'll see how it goes. I'm taking it weekly. I'll be planning it out as usual. I'm excited too because we're switching up the days for our hard workouts. Check out the plan for next week!