Texas Half, Austin, and Cowtown Training

Texas Half marathon what? Yeah, you guessed right. I'm now doing 3 races in one month.

And why shouldn't I?

My friend, Keith, made a new status update on his Facebook page the other day asking if anyone wanted to run the Texas Half marathon with him this Saturday and he specifically named me as one of his hopefuls...so I couldn't say no. I'm supposed to run 20 miles this Saturday anyways so the 13.1 should be a piece of cake.

This past week's training went good. I only did three of the four runs but it's better than the 'only two runs' I did the week before. I'm getting better about that. Last week was really crazy. I started a new job. It's a very part time, working from home thing that I'm really excited about. I'll make a post about it this week. Not now. This one's about running.

I'm going to try this where I add some comments to my runs:

This weeks goals:

Monday: 5 miles at 11:48/mi

Wednesday: 7 miles with 5 miles at 10:23/mi

Thursday: 4 miles at 11:48/mi

Saturday: 16 miles at 11:48/mi

Outcome:

Monday: 5 miles at 10:39/mi – This was a good run. The weather was perfect and I remember thinking the whole time how much easier this 5 miles felt than the 20 miles I had done two days prior.

Wednesday: 7 miles at 11:22/mi – I did this run with Zoe in the jogger. And my friend, Sheri, ran with me for the first time. I completely forgot to push my ‘lap’ button after the first mile so I could time myself for the faster 5 miles. But when I look at the data from my watch for those 5 miles it looks like I stayed right around the 10:23 goal pace. Funny story: at one point, on one of the more difficult hills, I was pushing the jogger and Sheri was pulling it for me. Haha! It must have been a funny sight for the people driving by!

Thursday: 0

Saturday: 16 miles at 11:25/mi – Sheri ran the first ten miles of this with me. I forget how much more fun it is to run with somebody! She’s a good running partner, she’ll keep me motivated. An observation that I made this week is that I chatted the entire time during both my runs with Sheri. Mike says he's not surprised that I could talk the whole time. Haha! But seriously, just a few months ago I couldn't talk at all while I was running, saying "hi" when I passed somebody was a strain. So this is a big improvement for me. Especially that I was chatting while pushing Zoe in the jogger up the hills. Yay me!