Woohoo!! I have survived week one of half marathon training complete with a grueling 9-mile run! When you're training ground is the Rocky Mountains you never quite know where your long runs will take you. I just put on my Runkeeper app and run until I hit my mileage goal, complete with "My Conscious" giving me positive encouragement along the way.
The road I live on is an incredibly long stretch. You can actually access it from two points, the bottom of the mountain or the top. To get to my house I hook into it up top. It ends up being a shorter trip. Last Friday, I choose to run the long way to get my 9 miles in. Let me tell you, that is no easy feat and there was a point I was pretty sure I was going to die. To make the trip a little more challenging I was trying out my new hydration belt (more on that in another post.) I hadn't gotten the placement of water bottles, the belt, etc. in the right place so my walking intervals were spent adjusting and readjusting. I should have tested it on my short run earlier in the week so my grueling 9 miles of hills would have been a bit more fun. Who am I kidding I HATE hills!!
I have been smart enough on long runs to use the run, walk, run interval method of training as I add miles. This definitely saved me. I haven't found a free running app that will allow me to set my own intervals yet (if you know of one PLEASE let me know) so I ended up using the timer on my phone with a simple 3-minute timer. This amounted to 3 minutes of running, 3 minutes of walking. That helped on the way back up the really long hill. To help you get a better picture the bottom of the hill is at roughly 8411 feet and the top is 8731 feet, plus I'm running at altitude so the air is a little thinner. Talk about a challenge!! I did it and rounded out the week logging 26 miles of running fun. Ok, there was a little walking involved, but I've gotta ease into the longer runs somehow!
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