The Beginning of Training...

A few posts ago I briefly mentioned that my crazy self has decided to run a half marathon with a friend from Italy, Jasmine. Well, yea...y'all read that right. Quite honestly, I'm not so sure what I've just gotten myself into.

For a while now, I've really been wanting to run the Disney Princess Half Marathon. It's basically a 13.1 mile run through Disney World, complete with characters all along the way motivating you! AND the medal is a tiara...helloooo, awesome!

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So after trying to convince people to run the race with me, I finally talked to Jasmine and she said she'd love to do it! Her and I are in the same boat in that we've never run anything this long before, so it will be good to have each other to rely on! And so we've finally signed up and now it's on to training! Luckily the race isn't until February 26, 2012 so we have quite a lot of time to train. I created my own little training schedule to last through the 22 weeks and over that time I'm going to try and update my progress each week on my blog!

For the first week of training (aka this past week) I went really simple to get back into the hang of running and working out at least 5 times a week. My week looked a little like this...

Monday: Ran 1 mile, then biked for 3. Stupid me doesn't remember my time though, so whooops! I think total it was something around 22 minutes? It wasn't bad, I even proceeded to do some ab workouts once I got home...crazy!

Tuesday was a super busy day for me, so I took that as one of my rest days. (and yes, I realize for my first week I was a little off my training schedule. I haven't quite figured out if my class/work schedule will fit in with this one, so I may end up changing around Monday and Tuesday some)

Wednesday: Ran two miles outside in ~21 minutes and oh gosh was it hot! Recently I've just been running in the gym on a track, so to go from being inside on a flat area to outside where it is hot and hilly was a big difference! I may or may not have felt like death...and yes only after two miles! But hey, it can only get better right?

Thursday: Back inside in the gym! I had a quick work out with my mom before we went to dinner with the grandparents. Ran a mile - 11:13 minutes then biked for 3 miles - 8:09 minutes. And again, I squeezed in some ab work outs :)

Friday: another day of rest! Hooray :)

Saturday: Okay I'm just going to be honest, Saturday was basically another day of rest aka I did not run the 2 miles that I was supposed to :( But you see, Saturday was BUSY and I was exhausted! Pluuuus, we walked to and from the football game (~2 miles) and were on our feet the WHOLE time, so that's got to count for something, right?! If only State had actually won...

Sunday: 3 miles - about 30 minutes total. I stayed at home Saturday night so I woke up early before church and went for a run around my neighboorhood which is quite a lot of big hills. Also it was in the 50's outside and pretty cold and windy! Hello fall...I'm still undecided on how I feel about your presence.

Well, week one down, 21 more to go! Any advice/tips/whatever are very welcome!! I'm looking into buying a running watch to track my distance/time/pace/etc...anyone have any suggestions on what watches are best?

Also, I don't know if there are any runners out there reading this, but I'm on dailymile.com now, so find me! It's a fun little way for me to track my workouts and my training overall, I like it :)

Adios,

B.Hines