Week 1: Three miles

51:08 min, 28.1 laps, 40:60 sec run/walk ratio (approximate)

So, here I go again! It's been almost a year since I last posted... my attempt to run the Las Vegas Half Marathon last year failed after the first long run. I vaguely remember being so tired and skipping runs and finally deciding it just wasn't going to happen. I had a long, tiring, depressing winter, and didn't exercise at all. Except for shoveling snow. We had a very cold winter with lots of snow, and it would have been near impossible to get out to do any runs even if I'd wanted to.

I've been trying off and on since spring to get back into the habit of doing some kind of exercise, and for the past month or so have been taking two-mile walks three or four times a week. (I try to do six times a week, but something always seems to happen to make me skip a day or two.) This week, I started on Tuesday. Because we've had a big fire here and the road was filled with fire trucks and such, I decided not to walk on the road, but just to go around the house. And, to keep it interesting, I decided to run a bit while I walked. And it was fun! And I got all enthused! So I walked two miles on Wednesday, then ran/walked around the house on Thursday, with a good time of 33:30 min. So I decided, what the heck. Maybe I can do another half marathon!

I walked two miles yesterday, then today I did my three-mile run around the house. My time was pretty bad, but I've only just gotten started back, so I don't mind too much. I felt good the whole way, though, and didn't tire out. Okay, 51 min is 17-minute-miles. That's not that bad.

Anyway, I'm shooting for the Long Beach Half Marathon on October 17. That doesn't give me much time to train, so I'm going to just relax and not worry about the time. Because of the way it's laid out, Long Beach has the same time limit for the Half Marathon as for the Marathon—7.5 hours. So I've got plenty of time to finish! I'm going to just try to finish in under 4 hours. Hm, a 17-min-mile half marathon is 3:42 hours. I can do that.

Since I've only got 11 weeks to train, I've worked out a schedule of 3, 4, 5, 6.5, 8, 9, 10, 11.5, 13, and 6 miles. That will get me up to 13 miles two weeks before the race, with a 6-mile recovery run the week before. And a couple of 1.5-mile increases instead of 1-mile. It's tight, and I'll have to be careful to run slowly enough to avoid getting injured, but I think I can do it.

One week down, 10 to go!