Hello friends! Remember when I signed up to do a half marathon later this year to support St. Jude, a children’s research hospital that does amazing life saving work and never makes families pay? Remember that?

Well training has continued since then!

I started out walking, a lot, everywhere. This coincided with my Alaska trip and being out of town where I was walking 10 miles a day anyway. I walked so much I was quite confident if nothing else, I’d be able to walk 13 miles in a relatively decent time.

Then I switch to running by starting a couch to 5k plan. I progressed several weeks through that and recently overlapped it with the Novice half marathon training plan from Hal Higdon.

So now I’ve done two weeks of that plan where I’ve run a 5k twice and then a 4 mile “long” run on the weekend. I’m still at the point of taking walk breaks during these runs but can cover the distance in a time that is decent (and improving weekly) for me.

My 5k in the beginning of training from the Hal Higdon plan was with a mile over 18 minutes. Not fast, I know!

Now I’m usually at 16 minutes or just under per mile.

So it’s still not fast but overall 2 minutes faster per mile overall is very encouraging to me in just a few weeks of consistency. I’m sure that number will continue to improve as I continue building endurance and losing weight.

A few random things of note during training:

• It’s been really hot and humid for quite a few runs lately. Thanks July/August/Memphis!  They were miserable and I was much slower. I’m not impressed with myself. However, we’ve also had some ridiculously cool for August weather and my run today felt really nice.
• Running is sometimes really fun. I forgot about that since I basically quit any type of running/jogging for a while. It’s really a fun feeling to explore neighborhoods and feel the freeing sensation of moving quickly.
• Cross training is mostly Zumba and biking. The Hal Higdon plan requires cross training twice a week so I’ve been using that to take a Zumba class I love or getting out there on my bike.
• Energy levels have been super low this past week or so. It was hard to motivate myself to run after work a couple times because I just felt so ridiculously tired. Perhaps I need to change up some diet or find a better energy source. I’ve still been taking Vitamin D so I’m a bit stumped on this one.
• I’m pretty proud of myself for continuing to train. I only partially wanted to sign up for this race but I’ve thrown myself intro training and feel confident it will get done and I’ll have a fun time doing it.
• I’m still 70-100 lbs overweight for my height (seriously) so I’m realistic in thinking I’m not going to run a super fast race or even run the whole race. I plan to take walk breaks and I’m hoping for a time between 3-3:30 hours. Not fast, I know, but did you see my mile times?  If I can continue losing weight rapidly over the next couple months that might improve so we will see if this race estimate changes or not. I’m eating at a level where I should be losing so that the whole process of running will be easier.

I probably won’t be posting about every run I do but these semi monthly updates are fun!

I’ll probably post again a time or two before the race sharing some progress as I continue. I’m not a big runner but I’m excited to be doing something different and raising money for such a good cause that has helped save so many lives.