My half marathon training officially began tonight. I have sixteen weeks to prepare. I want to do the best I am capable of, but other than that and finishing, I don't have any real goals for the race. Today was supposed to be a rest day according to my handy training plan from the Runner's World website. I decided to take some good advice from my friend Maria. She suggested some time ago that I get in my quality workouts whenever I could. That way if I can't run every day I planned to in a week at least I got in two quality runs each week. So tonight, I did my tempo run.
I didn't want to run when I got home tonight. It is getting cold out there and I was tired after a long busy day at work. David had a long day too, so by the time we got the kids from daycare and got home it was about 8pm. After getting the girls in bed, it was hard to get ready to go for a run. I have to remember this every time I don't want to run, because tonight's run was awesome. I am so glad I went.
I can set my pace for my tempo run a couple of different ways. I can use my heartrate monitor or I can time the run with my watch and try to stay at my tempo pace as determined by my training plan. I couldn't see my HR monitor or my watch tonight, so I used neither. A tempo run is supposed to be done at a "comfortably hard" pace. So I decided to set my pace based on effort. The first mile of the run is a warm up and the last mile (or 0.7 in my case) is a cool down. I ran both of those at an easy pace. The middle three miles were supposed to be at tempo. I decided to do my cemetery route again tonight. It is kind of hilly, so I wasn't sure that I would be able to keep my tempo up for the whole three miles. My tempo pace was determined from my first 5k race time and was supposed to be 11:51/mile. This was such an awesome run that even the hard parts felt great, but I had no idea what my pace was until I got back to my house. I ran the entire 4.7 miles in 50:40. That is a 10:43 pace!!! What's even better, is that my 3 miles of tempo were done at 10:04 pace.
I am so geeked. But as great as this run was, I know that they won't all be like that. I know that there will be days over the next 16 weeks when I won't be able to maintain a 12 minute pace. And I know that I won't always win the battle of the will and get myself out the door when I don't feel like running. But I am very happy with my start and am looking forward to the training that I have ahead.
Total Miles Today = 4.7 Approximate Miles Since Beginning = 612
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