Hello I am Raya, an athlete at heart who has always hated running and I am here to take you on my half marathon training adventure.
How does someone like me end up training for her first half marathon? I don’t run for fun, never have but when a friend asked me if I would join her in running a half marathon I was a bit hesitant at first but with support from my family and friends, I took the leap of faith and signed up. Here’s the thing, I like to think I’m an athlete at heart. I played soccer in elementary school, volleyball in middle school and yoga in high school. I’ve never had the urge to run 5 miles let alone 13.1 but I was about to face this challenge head on, the idea of challenging myself everyday excited me so much.
The race is March 14, so I began my training January 7th. My first treadmill run of 4 miles was intimidating but I completed it. The following day my hamstrings felt tight and knees began to hurt. This went on for a while during my training and I found out there really wasn’t a way to “stretch” ones knees only to ice before and after.
I replaced my training shoes with a pair of ultra light running shoes with extra cushion. To continue my training without further injuring my knees, I took up running on a local indoor track instead of the treadmill and downloaded the half marathon training plan on the Nike App.
The app is good for me because I didn’t want to hire a coach or personal trainer. I get daily notifications on how many miles I should run daily, which days to cross train and when to rest. A sample run week looked like this:
Monday: 7miles
Tuesday: 4miles
Wednesday: Rest
Thursday: 4 miles
Friday: 9 miles
Saturday: Rest
Sunday: 4 miles
I’ve been training for several weeks now and I can run 9 miles without stopping or feeling exhausted! How is that for an accomplishment!
I want to hear from you, are you currently training for a long distance race? What are some training methods that’s worked for you?