Hi yall!
I've been lurking on this thread for a while. I haven't posted on Dis Boards for sometime (not since I did the college program back in 2007), but I can't remember my old username's password! Oh well, starting fresh.
ANYWAY! In an effort to stay in shape and have a sweet reward, I am a newbie runner who signed up for the W&D half. I see many of you are also in Texas, and training in this heat and humidity has been extreeemmmely painful. I think running in the evenings is better temp-wise, but I feel like I poop out after only a couple miles in the evenings, thus I've been trying to do my long runs in the mornings, but waking up early on a weekend day is tough too!
My longest run has been a 10k, so I'm really nervous about getting to twice that distance in the remaining two months we have to train. I've been using Nike + to train, and I too think that my ipod sensor is overstating my runs (it told me I went nearly 6.6 miles for the 10k, rather than just 6.2), but I don't want to recalibrate it at this point because it would screw all my stats up...I guess I just have to make myself think of a half marathon as 14 miles rather than 13.1 for my ipod's sake.
Tomorrow morning I'm hoping to go 6 miles, and basically increase 1 mile every weekend until the big race day (that is the plan at least haha). I have no idea how I will survive past 7 miles, as I feel like I want to die after about 3. I've loosely been following the Galloway plan with the run/walk method. Lately I've been walking for .1 of a mile, then running (or really jogging) .3 miles. I think in order to make it 6+ miles, I'm going to have to slow that pace down though. My average pace on a good day is about 11:30 min/mile, but I think once I started going longer I will be much closer to 13.
Running is much more of a mental game for me than a physical one. I just get bored. There is nothing to keep me going other than myself. Like when I get tired, it's so easy to say to myself, well, why don't you just stop? I think I'll need to stay distracted in order to make it the whole time. When I registered, I said I'd finish in about 3 hours. I think that will be about right for me.
I am running with two other friends, one who lives here in TX and another one I worked with during my CP (we were custodians at the Studios if you're wondering, super gross jobs but loved it!). We will be staying at BWI, so I'm super excited.
I know that was a novel, but I've really enjoyed reading everyone elses' stories and journies and tips, so I wanted to properly introduce myself! Good luck to everyone!!