A Little Help from My Friends

A photo my wonderful friend and mentor Pat took of me running a couple weeks ago. I am liking what I see!

Not much has changed since the last post... YET.

But today I got some help from my partner, who did his best Jiminy Cricket imitation to get me to snap out of the mindless eating crap I've been indulging in lately. Because of his reminders, my eating wasn't too bad today.

And I also got to thinking seriously about half marathons, specifically the Niagara Falls Womens' Half Marathon in Ontario, Canada, just across the border from where I live. It's in early June, just a few days before my 46th birthday. So yeah, I was thinking... I'm doing the No Boundaries program version 3.0 starting in February, which will take me to being able to run eight miles by the end of April. The NFWHM offers a handy training schedule that also acts as a money-back guarantee to finish the race if you follow the plan. So, I had a careful look at it and plugged it into my calendar. It looks to me like as long as I stick to the schedule, I should really have no problem being able to do it. I am capable of running the miles required up until week 6 out of 17 now, so it should be totally doable.

Of course I wanted to check in with my pack of running friends to see if what I was thinking was crazy, or if this is indeed something I can do. I got nothing but positive feedback, and these are the ladies who have continuously supportive and encouraging and helping me to achieve my goals this past year. In the conversation several of us also decided to make a commitment to sign up for the Wineglass Half Marathon in Corning, NY, a few hours away, in October. So now I've got not just one, but two halfs to train for in 2016!

The NF training schedule begins on February 9th with three runs per week. I've only been doing one run each week since around Thanksgiving, so until then I'll work on building up to the 3x/week again, but shorter runs between two and four miles. Starts tomorrow on that.

I also feel that having this major thing to train for will give me extra impetus to really get serious about my eating and losing weight again. After all, the lighter I am, the easier the runs will be. Obviously I am not interested in crash dieting, not saying that at all – but just really being dedicated to eating quality foods and eating reasonable amounts. I will also need to get back to strength training to protect myself from injury. I know what I need to do there.

My schedule will be looking something like this:

Monday: Strength and cross training at the gym

Tuesday: Prescribed run (NoBo)

Wednesday: Strength and cross training at the gym

Thursday: Prescribed run

Friday: Rest day or cross training (swim?)

Saturday: Prescribed long run (NoBo)

Sunday: Rest day

I'm very excited to get started!

The training plan! The sticky notes have mileage vs. k. :)