As I’ve done some reflecting lately–a lot of musings while running–I remembered my old Facebook notes of my first half marathon training.  Remember Facebook Notes?  It was Facebook’s attempt at a blog service.  Anyways, I know a lot of my friends enjoyed my first foray into running, and I’ve been seriously remiss in this last training as far as blogging goes.  So here is an attempt to rectify that.

I’ve been training for the Madison Her Half Marathon now since New Year’s Day, so roughly six months now.  It has been a good training schedule and session, although I have definitely had several bad weeks.  Here in the last 3 weeks to go, it is an important struggle I need to focus on and make sure that I do my training and stay injury free.  I have done a good job on cross-training this time around, and only running 3 days a week while doing strength training 3 days a week with 1 rest day.  Strength training was seriously lacking in my 2012 training and contributed to the knee pain I experienced.

My cross-training has helped not only my strength, but my endurance as well.  While a lot of the cross-training I do is a 30-minute workout, I have several that are closer to an hour, and I can always piggy-back workouts too.  My runs have felt pretty good, when I am consistent with them.

Honestly, I feel like I could use another month to train.  I have 3 weeks before I’m running 5 miles more than I have yet trained.  I will be able to do it as long as I follow my plan and stay properly fueled.

Running has been a real exercise in self-love, patience, and determination.  Those miles are there, 5,280ft long, no matter if I’m walking or running them, and I have to physically move my feet along to finish them.  I’ve been focusing more on my form and moving with my momentum, using my mechanics to run more efficiently.  It’s a practice to stay in that rhythm and not start fighting myself, but it’s been fun realizing it and refocusing during my runs.

So in these next three weeks I am going to stick to my plan, prep well before each run, and I will finish my half marathon–perhaps not as fast as I originally intended, but I will have had a good six months of training and I am proud of the endurance that I have built.

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