As I recently commented on, my next long race will be the Hyannis Half Marathon on February 24. Thanks to the nifty date countdown on the race website, the race takes place in 83 days. This also means I have 83 days to get my lazy ass back in shape for this race. It's hard to believe only 2 months ago I ran a whole marathon!
I started training yesterday with an easy 4.8 mile run out in the cold. As my body is not acclimated to being out in the cold, it felt f-ing freezing! For this race's training, I am going to run a lot, but make sure to keep up with other cross training and exercise. Included in this is: lifting (upper and lower body), biking, rock climbing, eliptical at the gym, dodgeball, breakdancing. What I believe is important to run outside as much as possible, not just inside on a treadmill. This will acclimate my body more to being in the cold, which could prove very important on race day.
Training for today will be rock climbing and biking. Running and lifting will be tomorrow, with lifting and dodgeball on Tuesday. I'll have to break out the powdered gatorade soon to keep my salt intake at appropriate levels.
I plan on wearing a funny costume for my race in February. I will put a poll up soon on this site and let all of my blog readers (all 5 of them?) decide what I will wear. This has to be functional, as I will be running 13.1 miles in the cold and hope to crack 1 hr. 40 min, but it can still be funny at the same time. Right now I am considering a number of options including: Veggie guy (Powered by Vegetables!), Superman (including cape), over-the-top runner guy, beer guy (beer can on a stick taking place of carrot on a stick?), Red Sox guy. Any other suggestions to add to this list?
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4 comments:
Hey thanks for reading my blog and for the comment as well! Its great to see another runner on here. I seriously don't know any other runners and have been too afraid to run any races by myself but I think I might have convinced a friend to do a half marathon with me in march called the shamrockin half marathon in sacramento.
http://www.fleetfeetsacramento.com/shamrockn-half-marathon-5
Thats the link for it if ya ever want to check it out :) so how long have you been running for? any training tips for a half marathon? Love your blog! keep up the good work!
Amber, I def. recommend you run that half marathon in March. Putting in the time commitement and then running a race is very personally rewarding in my opinion. Even if you run it alone, it isn't so bad- at all of the races I've run the people are always really friendly. At my marathon I met a guy a couple miles into the race and then talked to him for most of the race.
I started running only last spring (April '06) and followed this site for training: http://www.marathontraining.com/marathon.html
Although the site is about a whole marathon, their advice is good for a half marathon as well. Although not necessary, I would recommend you do other cross training as opposed to only running. Maybe I'll read about your race on your blog!
Awesome! thanks for the encouragement, running the half marathon would definitely bring me some feeling of accomplishment :) Thanks for the tips, I will have to check out that website. What kind of cross training do you do?
For my cross training I do the elliptical at the gym sometimes, even though I used to think of it as sort of a 'girly' form of exercise (about 95% of the people at my gym who use the elliptical machine are women), if you turn it to a high enough level it is a good almost-full-body low impact workout. I also like to bike outside when it's nice out (don't know where you are, but the weather in Boston right now is not really conducive to outside bike riding), I do hill training every once in a while, I play in a cool dodgeball league once a week which I would recommend to anyone (great exercise and lots of fun!) along with some breakdancing every once in a while. I'd also recommend you lift weights (if you don't do so already) both upper and lower body. I think a good variety of activities is the best for the body and more interesting and helps prevent injury by not always using the same muscles, pounding the same joints, etc.
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