Half Marathon Training Week #1
18 Jun
Knowing my first half marathon of the Fall season was coming, I wanted to be prepared. So a week and a half ago I put together my training schedule. I put together our plan using Hal Higdon’s Novice 2 schedule. The Novice 2 schedule is a 4-days a week running schedule. I really don’t do well with back-to-back running days so I dropped a day settling on 3 running days a week. I also plan to keep up CrossFit 2-3x a week which given the fact we run during class, I don’t feel that bad about dropping a run day. I had the whole schedule set and then I remembered I do better when I extend the schedule. The Novice 2 schedule typically increases the long run day each week by a mile. I do better when I extend it half a mile each week and extending the length of the training schedule from 12 weeks to 18 weeks.
Then I plugged in the actual dates… and realized the schedule was starting in 2 days. Oy. On one hand I was dreading the start of training, but on the other hand I was secretly looking forward to it. I found myself looking up upcoming races to try and decide which one’s to add to my schedule.
Monday
3 mile run – 35 minutes 11:40 pace
I started Greys Anatomy from the first episode. I’ve seen several seasons but missed many along the way as well. Watching this while running surprisingly made the time speed by.
Tuesday
CrossFit
After a warm-up, we practiced some Turkish getups. For these, you lie on the ground on your back with a kettle bell in one hand which is raised straight up. You slowly stand up while keeping your kettle bell arm raised in the air. In case that makes no sense, you can watch a Turkish Get-Up Intro video on YouTube.
Next we got started with the WOD [aka Workout Of (the) Day]
3 rounds of
- 400 meter run
- 21 Burpees
We were told we were to complete this in 12 minutes or less. If we didn’t think we could do it fast enough, we should scale it down. Scaling down would mean doing less burpees. I started but was just wiped this day. (Probably because I ran the day before.) Since I was feeling sluggish, I actually scaled it down to 10 Burpees per round. Even with this, I still finished all 3 rounds in 12:37. So I made the time limit. I secretly wished I could stay for the next class after this. Although I was slow during the workout, I still had some gas left in my tank.
Our coach put together an extra optional workout called the Beach Bod WOD, so I took that on next.
4 rounds (12 reps, 9 reps, 6 reps, and 3 reps) of:
- Kettlebell Swings
- Wallballs
- Situps
It was a nice tough workout. Definitely challenged me!
Wednesday
Rest day so I could check out Spirit of the Marathon II for it’s one-night only showing!
Thursday
2.5 mile run – 32 minutes 12:44 pace
I was heading out to meet a friend for dinner, so I squeezed in a quick 2.5 mile run on the dreadmill.
Friday
Rest Day! Took the day off to rest the legs and met Adam for dinner at 4 Rivers Smokehouse.
Saturday
2 mile run + CrossFit
We tried to hit the UNF trails for our first long run of the schedule, 4 miles, but the whole place was flooded. We ran the sidewalk around campus instead which was only a 2 mile run. By that time we were running short on time, so we had to head out.
We drove south to Mickler’s Landing for a Beach WOD with CrossFit 904! There we did a little bit of running and some team exercises on the beach. It was a lot of fun and surprisingly not that hot. There was a nice breeze on the beach.
Sunday
We took another rest day, so we could get up early and hit the water!
Yup, a morning of Bass fishing that started with us getting up at 5 am. The rest of the day was spent prepping food for the week, cleaning, and relaxing.
With that, Week 1 was in the books!
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