Double Double Your Enjoyment

This morning the goal was to run 6-7 miles in order to keep up with the training plan. Originally I had it in my head that I'd do 7 miles so that I would be able to say that I had gotten more than halfway there distance wise, but once I started running, I actually thought that it might be fun to see how long it would take me to do exactly half of the distance of the race.

So, I set my sights on doing 6.55 miles. I did the first 5 miles without anything too noteworthy. Just got on the treadmill and kept running. Once I did 5 miles, I then stopped the treadmill and restarted right away because the limit on the treadmill is 60 minutes and I knew I couldn't finish the distance in that amount of time.

I think that was the point where I started to get really tired. Even though I maybe stopped for at most 30 seconds, it was enough to trick my body into thinking that we could be done for the day and it was an uphill battle for me from there to finish. I did have to jump off the treadmill and count to 5 once after stopping/restarting just to catch my breath before finishing the run.

By the end of the run, I was really glad to be done and I walked for a while to cool down. I was really proud of myself for sticking with it and finishing the distance I had set out to do. I am a little nervous that I'll have to double that distance for the half-marathon, but I've got a lot of time to get there. I also was really impressed and proud of my time for the run. I had done the McMillan Running Calculator the other day (using my 10K race time of 1:02:12) and had come up with a half-marathon time of 2:18:24 (1o:33/mile pace). I sort-of freaked out when I saw that number because I had been thinking that two and a half hours was more likely and that extra 12 minutes is really a lot when you're running 13.1 miles!

However, after today's run and the fact that it's only Week 1 of training, I can actually see that maybe it's not so crazy to think that I could have sub 2:30:00 half-marathon time. I'm not going to get too excited about it yet or set any crazy time goals because it is so early in the training and I have yet to do any double digit runs, so I've still got a long way to go, but it's definitely a boost to see how I'm doing thus far.

In total this week, I ran 20.05 miles, which is right on pace with the 19 to 21 that I was supposed to complete. One week down, 10 more to go ...

Running
Time: 1:07:29
Distance: 6.55 miles
Pace: 10:18/mile
Calories: 919
Maximum HR: 192
Average HR: 180