It IS a real race

This week a few people asked me how the half went. For the most part people were very complimentary of the accomplishment and I appreciated that. For me, I've mentioned was a little disappointed with how it ended, so I was losing sight of the fact that the end was a 13.1 mile finish line. Once I decide to do something, I generally consider it done so sometimes the actual finish is very anticlimactic. Now that I've had more time to reflect, I'm happy with the experience and I'm looking forward to improving next time.

But, a few times people followed up quickly with the question- do I want to do a "real" one? I know they mean full marathon and they didn't mean it as an insult, but what's not real about a 13.1 mile race? For right now I don't have the time to devote to training for a full marathon and I know that. I'm very happy with the idea of improving my half marathon for the next few years (or as my schedule allows). If I can maintain a lifestyle where going for a 5 mile run is a regular, non-heroic effort, I will be happy with that. I've got three relatively young kids, I work full time and I'm about to add school to the mix shortly. I'm doing what "real" I can handle. Okay, rant over.

Monday starts training again, I've taken this week off entirely. The next half is 19 weeks from tomorrow, this time I'm quite sure I'll be plenty prepared barring injury or life event obstacle. I'll be using a different training schedule, one that has 4-5 days of running per week as opposed to the three days on the past schedule. I think that Friday nights will be long run night, on the treadmill, because I can't fit in the long runs in before work anymore. Sunday night will be short run night, also on the treadmill, so that I won't have to give up weekend family time for training, that's one trade-off I'm not yet ready to make. We'll see how that goes for a while and whether I want to maintain it for the full training program. I'm also going to get back to the hundred push-ups challenge. I won't likely be going to the gym regularly, so I need to find effective training options that don't require the equipment. I'm looking forward to the "next phase".