Training for a Half Marathon

Hello Everyone!!

It's been a long week for me. I had a bit of the flu mid-week which came at the most inopportune time of course. I am feeling like myself again - thank goodness - but had to catch up on some things that I missed when I was "down and out". Anyway, I wanted to talk about my half-marathon training....I can't remember if I mentioned this earlier, but I signed up for the "Calgary Marathon" half-marathon race this year - the same event that I ran a 10K in at last year. I am still doing the half but instead of running it, it will be a combo of walking and some running. I just don't feel that I have trained enough to run it, and have really enjoyed walking to be honest. There's a good group of people that walk instead of run at the Running Room, and you still get a hell of a workout by longer distance walking a good pace.

Erin, one of my walking friends and I were talking about the differences between walking and running since we have done both. Admittedly, there is a "high" that you get from running that you don't get from walking. But walking is great because sometimes you just don't feel like running. That's what started it for me. I wanted to do the distance but just didn't feel like I could get my butt in gear to do it. I told myself instead that I at least needed to get the distance in, and just run when I started feeling like it again. Only I never got that urge. Actually last weekend while we were doing our 18K walk, was the first time in a while that I did feel like running (and not to shorten the time up -- took us about 3 hours!). It was because of a LARGE group of half-marathoners who were doing their race in the same place we were walking. There's just something about the energy of running in  a race!

So I did get in an 18K distance last weekend. I think that on race day that we will be walking even a bit faster, and if there's a few running bursts (from all the excitement) thrown in for good measure, I imagine that it will take right around 3 hours to finish the entire distance.

I'm headed off to Medicine Hat to see a wonderful friend and help celebrate her daughter's 4th birthday. We'll be doing a 5K walk for charity this weekend with our kids. This will be the first event my daughter has ever been in - so I will let you know how that goes. Don't worry - we're bringing a wagon. If she feels like it, she can pull me ;)

Happy Saturday everyone!