Now that October is in the books and November is upon us, I thought I’d do a survey of my progress in training for the half-marathon.
In the month of October, I ran on seventeen of the thirty-one days, taking a total of eighteen runs (including the warm-up jog I did before my 10K), and ran 79.49 miles for the month. On those runs, I burned an estimated total of 11,793 calories.
Those are pretty heady numbers, but I think they only tell part of the story.
At the beginning of the month, I hadn’t yet cracked an eight-minute-mile pace on any of my initial runs, none of which had been longer than four miles. Granted, I was also not quite two weeks into my training at that point, but I was still a bit slower than I wanted to be as I was beginning to build strength and endurance, while also feeling my way as I started running serious hills for the first time.
I continued to run around a 8:10-8:20 mile pace for the first half of October, occasionally going a little faster (and sometimes a little slower) as my mileage increased. Then, in the middle of the month, I finally cracked the eight-minute barrier by more than a hair, and ran my first race in what was a blisteringly fast time for me (still the fastest average pace per mile I’ve managed so far).
In hindsight, running that race seems to have been about the best thing I could’ve done in terms of training mentally (and physically), since it gave me a major boost of confidence. My times since the race have been significantly faster than in my earlier training, as I’ve been quite a bit faster than eight minutes per mile, with the exceptions of the two clunkers I put up on the past two Fridays, when I was running for a second consecutive day and my legs felt at their weakest. And it’s not only been continuing to run at a clip that’s fast for me, but also the fact that I’ve sustained a sub-eight-minute pace as my mileage has increased and inched closer to the half-marathon distance. I think probably after last weekend, when I ran ten miles and kept my pace under eight minutes, I started to feel like I really had a chance of cracking the eight-minute mark over the half-marathon distance.
So, my confidence has swelled over the past month, and my performance has improved substantially. Then, there are the physical benefits. My weight has gone down about six pounds from the end of September, but more importantly, I feel like my legs are getting a lot stronger. They ache less when I run during the week, and my body isn’t disagreeing with me as I push it to run faster and farther than I’ve generally run in the past. Also, there’s the effect all this running is having on my attitude and overall mood. It’s probably a good way to help relieve stress, but I also find it’s invigorating to go for a brisk run shortly after rising in the morning, and I think it helps to put me in a better state of mind for the rest of the day (assuming I’ve gotten enough sleep the previous night, which remains one area of my training where I need definite improvement).
So, I’m now about four weeks away from race day, and I feel like I’m in pretty good shape, both figuratively and literally, to run a half-marathon and break 1:44:48 (which is 13.1 miles at eight minutes per mile). That’s not bad, considering I estimated my finish time at 1:52:29 (just a rough estimate off the top of my head of what I thought I could achieve, really) when I filled out my half-marathon registration earlier this month.
Of course, there are still a lot of unknowns. I’ve never run the half-marathon course, so I won’t know with certainty where the uphill sections are, and where I should try to make up time. I’ve also never run with several thousand other people; there were more than 800 people running the 10K, but that’s a drop in the bucket compared to what I’ll experience at the half-marathon. And there’s still the unknown of how things will proceed over the final weeks of training. I’m not at all worried about finishing the race, since I’ve run at least that far twice previously, before I had begun to run regularly or train systematically. But, I suppose there’s always the possibility I get sick or roll an ankle or have some other unforeseen mishap interrupt or impair my training.
Still, barring some unforeseen complication, I’m full of optimism about my chances at the end of the month.
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