Training Plan Update: It's Official

I am all signed up for my half marathon!  It's a little before schedule (I'm just now entering week 7 and the plan was to do a solid 8 weeks of training), but then I saw this tweet:

Yep.  They got me.

Not really sure why I panicked as much as I did but I immediately sent a text to my sister and nice friend that was something to the effect of "AHHHH MY RACE IS SELLING OUT!!!!!!"  Both of them calmly replied that I should register and that it was better to sign up earlier than I thought than not be able to do it at all.  It turns out that it's probably better that I signed up now because the majority of the hotels close to the start/finish (they are in slightly different spots) were already booked up.  I have enough anxiety on race morning without stressing over how I'm going to get there!

The first 6 weeks of training have gone really well.  I've been running 3 days a week and trying to get some cross training in.  Overall I have logged 92 miles.  I had a week or two that was kind of rough, but I'm finding that my runs have been feeling a lot stronger as time has been going by.  I haven't missed a training run yet and have been pretty flexible with my running.  I've been trying to plan ahead so that I can get my runs done without being stressed out.  I switched my 7 mile week with my 4 mile week after realizing the trail my nice friend and I had chosen was going to be a bit more of a challenge than we had originally anticipated.  I've just been relaxed with how things have been going (which is rare).

Not the same park, but the same idea. Think lots of climbing and sliding.
It's good that I didn't bring my camera because I definitely fell haha!

I think the biggest thing that's helped this time around is that on the official plan two of my three runs are on Saturday and Sunday.  I like knowing that I only have to do one run during the work week.  If it happens that I can get more done during the work week, that's cool.  If not, it's fine.  This also means that I only have one run that I pretty much have to do on the treadmill.  I think this is partly good because I tend to run faster on the 'mill which can't be a bad thing when training!

So far my longest run has been 7 miles.  My nice friend ran with me so I had some company which was nice!  We saw a corgi on the run which put a huge smile on my race.  It was definitely the boost I needed to make it up the hill.  Apparently it doesn't take much to make me happy on a run.  I was a little bummed because my Garmin never found satellites so I had to just had to go by the time I figured I could get 7 done in.  It's fine, but since I felt so strong I was curious to see my pace for each mile!

Maddux says no way was that corgi cuter than he is.

This week I have 8 miles on the calendar and then my plan starts alternating between long runs and half mile repeats.  I like this because it mixes it up and the chances of getting burnt out on long runs greatly diminish.

Here we go!  Training is officially official and I could not be more excited!