Half Marathon Training: 13.1 Day 1

Introduction:

I've registered for the Richmond half-marathon, on November 12, 2010.  This will be my first half marathon event.  Up til now, I have run two 5k's, one 10k, and will run another 10k during my half marathon training.

For those of you unfamiliar with distance running, a half marathon is 13.1 miles.

Today was the first day of my 12 week program.  I hope to be able to stick to it, but things will probably come up.  Injuries may occur, babies will be born, but I will do my best to follow at least 90% of it.

I've combined two plans, the Cool Running Half Marathon beginner plan and the Hal Higdon intermediate plan.  The Cool Running plans are a bit tougher, but based on my schedule they won't work the whole time through.

My weekly mileage:
15, 21, 20, 19, 21, 25, 23, 26, 24, 18, 22, 30 (last week includes the 13.1 run).

So without further ado, onto

Day 1:

I ran at 5:30 this morning. Today was a 4 mile fartlek.   Basically what that is is an unstructured interval.  I ran for about .85 miles as a warmup and then alternated quick sprints, 5k paces, 10k paces, and slower jogging.  I ran the normal loop around my condo.  There are only 2 fartleks in the training program: today and next week.  The rest of this week I'll be running easy runs on W, R, S and a long run on Sunday.