Half Marathon Training Update: Week 13

The half marathon approacheth! We’re only 7 weeks out from race day, and things are getting real.

My longest run to date has been 9 miles, with a 10 miler coming up this weekend (eep!). And for the past few weeks, my training plan has had me running about 28 miles per week—numbers that I never in a million years thought I’d be able to do. I have to admit that I’m surprised at how not a huge deal the increase in distance has been.

Every week, without fail, I look at my scheduled runs for the week and think to myself, HOLY SH!T, this will be the week I keel over and die, there is NO WAY I can run five days and cover all those miles . . . but then the week goes plugging by and, well, I haven’t died yet. And every single Saturday (the day of my longer runs), I look at the new, long, ridiculous distance I’m supposed to run and I think I WILL NEVER MAKE IT BACK HOME, GOODBYE CRUEL WORLD, but then I’m out and I’m running and sometimes it stinks but more often it doesn’t, and then I’m home again, and somehow I’ve done it and survived.

I’m getting there, one little baby step at a time. I’m starting to reach a point where I’m thinking, my gosh, I’m only 3 miles away from being able to run 13 miles, I’m actually going to be able to handle this! And compared to the start of my training, when I thought I will probably be rushed to the hospital before I even come close to 13 miles, that’s pretty good progress.

Since the last time I wrote about running:

These long runs take it out of me. No huge revelation there, but I cannot believe how exhausted I feel after a 7+ mile run . . . even if the run itself went great. The way I feel for the rest of the day after a long run reminds me of the way I felt during the first trimester of my pregnancies—100% drained. I actually haven’t been sore (yet!) after my long runs, but I just feel dead tired. Jeff tells me I need to eat more protein. I’ll work on it. Burgers FTW.

My runs are getting harder and harder to schedule. Squeezing in a 3 or 4 mile run around Jeff’s schedule (which is very busy and rather inflexible) hasn’t been a huge deal . . . but trying to plan 5 or 7 or 9 mile runs around his schedule so he can be home with the kids? Not nearly as easy to work out. And I’m not a fast runner, so it takes me a good long while to get these longer runs completed. I’ve had to do more treadmill running recently, which I’m not crazy about. Last Saturday, I did 9 miles on the treadmill because Jeff worked all the livelong day and I had no other option. Woof.

Baymax captures my running perfectly:

Physiologically speaking . . . I doubt that I’ve lost much, if any, weight while running, but it’s hard to say because I don’t weigh myself (I think my last journey onto a scale was at least a year ago). I kind of think maybe my face looks a little thinner? But other than that, any changes must be minor, since I haven’t particularly noticed. (I asked Jeff, who claims I look ‘more fit now,’ whatever that means.)

My butt is more or less butt-shaped now, which is a new development (I’ve had a flat, pancake-ish mom butt since I was about 6 years old), so having one that is round is a bit exciting. (Is it okay to blog about my butt? This feels weird.)

I briefly had some foot/ankle issues early on in my training, but having a chiropractor for a husband comes in awfully handy--he worked on it for me and it cleared up fairly quickly, and hasn’t been a problem since. Hopefully they stay in the past.