Thursday, December 29, 2011

Half Marathon Adventure

Actually I should probably entitle this blogging adventure because I'm doing this post to see how it works. But I am over a month further into my half marathon training. At times I have to fight off the temptation to try and run rather than run/walk it or to run some of my run/walk training run/walks. So far I've convinced myself better to take a 1 minute walk break every 4 minutes.
I'm really looking forward to running in cooler weather where my heart rate should be lower at a faster pace, particularly after starting to run at 4:15 in the afternoon a couple of weeks ago on a day where the temperature was around 90 at that time and more like 100 with the humidity factored in. I ended up having to walk for about an hour until the sun started going down and it wasn't so hot. But I started at 5:50 am last week and that was a lot better. Tomorrow I change from 4/2 intervals on my long run to 4/1 so am looking forward to seeing how that goes - particularly since it's been a bit cooler the last two days because of it being overcast and raining at times. It's great that running 2 1/2 hours hasn't been as difficult as I'd thought.
I'm still struggling with trying to fit in more swimming and bike rides. I didn't get to ride at all last week since Christmas cancelled my Sunday bike ride but I did get in about an hour and 20 minutes this week on Tuesday since our office is closed this week. Then a 2,700 swim in 1 hour and 18 minutes the next day. Hopefully I can ride again on Sunday for some decent bike time this week. I'm not sure if the weather will cooperate though.
I'm looking online for various coaching opportunities when I get to Miami and looking for the best deal on an underwater video swim analysis and perhaps a better gait analysis than I'll get at a running shoe store though I'll see how it goes at the running shoe store first.