Half-Marathon 2011

When considering what went right and what went wrong with last year's blog, I see more wrongs than rights! After losing my password, I abandoned the blog. In addition, I more or less abandoned logical training and had a VERY TOUGH 13.1 miles when race day came!

What went right: my cousin and I had phenomenal support from our family and now all of the cousins are running the half this year! How exciting!!!

I guess that means it's time to start training. My schedule will be another modified version of Hal Higdon's Intermediate Training Program and can be found here: Half-Marathon Training Template. I have a pretty full schedule this year between my regular full-time job, a part-time track coaching job, recruiting and competitions, school, volunteering, and training for this thing, so I may post fairly infrequently. With that said, I'll aim to have interesting, informative, and perhaps comical posts of greater quality than if I was posting more often. Happy running :)

edited to add: Actually, it looks like I lost my password after thinking I wanted to do a full marathon. In any case, I am back!

1. Intentions

Alright, my name is Lyndsey, and my sister had the great idea to share my marathon experiences through blogging. As is the case with our entire lives, she suggests something that will probably leave me eating my words or play-doh ("if we can make it out of things from the food pantry of course we can eat it"), and I do it anyways. However, I think by setting up the blog I have made the second step towards commitment.

What then, is the first step? On May 2nd I will be running my first half-marathon with two of my cousins. Our goal is simply to finish, and I been training about twice a week - one short run, one long run. This is definitely not a good training setup and do not recommend anyone try it if they are looking for a good time.

Starting May 16th I will begin training for a full marathon which will take place on September 19th. I will be following a real training plan (viewable on Hal Higdon's website, see Novice 1 http://www.halhigdon.com/marathon/Mar00novice.htm ), and the goal is for me to actually follow it.

I know I can more or less 'push' my way through a half-marathon, however, the thought of a full marathon scares the crap out of me. Here I am then, starting my 'pre-marathon' portion of the blog. Get ready for a course in 'marathon running', and please feel free to join me on this adventure!