Today begins my 12-week training for the American River Parkway Half Marathon. It seemed like a good idea a few weeks ago to sign up for it. It’s on May 1, just about 2.5 weeks after my 30th birthday. The last time I ran a race it was a 5k and I’m pretty sure I was in 5th grade. I remember doing pretty well – but…that was about 20 years ago, so…
As I was writing this post, Sarah asked me, “So, 3 weeks would be the 28th, right?” That’s the joke (err, I don’t know if it’s actually a joke, per se) around our house. 3 weeks is about the amount of time that I commit to doing something. I ran for a couple weeks back in August (you can see my stats here) but again, it only lasted a couple weeks. I used my Moleskine PDA for about 3 weeks. And I’m sure Sarah could give you other examples as well.
So, this is 12 weeks. I’m using a variation of Hal Higdon’s half-marathon training: it involves running, cross-training, strength and stretching and…rest. It looks slightly intimidating – but also doable. I think I’ll be running the Diablo Trails Challenge 5k on March 20 and I’m trying to find a 10k on April 10th that I can run locally. Hopefully between the training and getting some actual racing experience in, I’ll be ready to drive up to Sacramento on April 30 and run the half-marathon the next morning.
The #runrevrun hashtag used in the title is something that a few folks in ministry started using a few weeks ago. I think part of it is to help with accountability, which is definitely something that I need. I taped up a few of my training schedules around the house for reminders (which is good, because Sarah can see them and remind me of what I need to do each day!) and am going to try and schedule in my runs to help me make sure that I actually do this.
For any of you who have trained for marathons or half-marathons, I’d love to know any tips or helpful advice that you might have. And feel free to check in with me on Facebook and Twitter and see if I’m keeping up with my training.