My first half is in 3 weeks. I am not following any training program, so any advice would be great:
I was training much more in the summer, usually 3 to 6 mile runs every other day. During that time I also did a 10 mile run where I felt pretty decent, but I paced myself with it being my first +6 mile run. Lately because of my work schedule I haven't been able to run much. It's been around 1 or 2 times a week. Last week I did a 3 mile run on Thursday night which felt great, and then a 10.5 mile run on Sunday where I felt sluggish from the beginning, but I ran 1/2 mile further than my last 10 mile run and ran it 5 minutes faster. The last two miles were pretty rough.
I don't follow any plans because I never know when I'm going to be able to go out and run. I'm thinking of doing a 6 mile run this weekend (three weeks to go), then another 10 mile run the following weekend as my last longer training run (two weeks to go). I'm also going to try a gel during that run to see if that makes any difference, I've never tried any of them before and wish I would have tried one sooner. The weekend before the half I might do one more shorter run just to work on pace, but that's probably it.
Sound like right thing to do? Any other suggestions? Like I said, with my work schedule, I can't really run during the week - sometimes on Thursdays if I get out early, so my choices are limited. I feel like around 10 to 11 will be good because for my 5k and 10k runs I've always did much better on race days with other people to compete with and the adrenaline flowing... hopefully that continues with this half!