Week 4 Half Marathon Training Complete

Week 4 is now complete and I am feeling so accomplished! I ran a total of 19.44 miles according to my Nike+, I was supposed to do 19 miles to meet my training schedule, although I have noticed the Nike+ not being spot on with the treadmill lately, today it was overestimating, and on Wednesday it was underestimating, so I think it may be time for another calibration.

But anyway, on to this week. Monday was fairly easy considering the day before I ran 6 miles. Wednesday was a little harder as it was a 5 miler, but I gave it a pretty good effort, just not as fast as I would have liked, but still good effort. Thursday was fairly easy, it was the first time I set a new record for my average pace, running the mile in 9:09 minutes; it was also the first time in a while that I went before noon and I ended up showering at the gym and then meeting Tony for lunch after and then went to run a bunch of errands. Today was definitely completely a mental hurdle, 8.25 miles...I got through the first half with just a couple walking breaks and one stretch break, the second half was so much easier though. The only thing that got in my way was the treadmill resetting at 60 minutes, it automatically goes into cool down mode after it hits 60 minutes and when in that mode it kept resetting the incline and speed, I was at 6 miles then and my water bottle was almost empty, so I took the opportunity to step off the treadmill for a minute, refill my bottle, and restart the machine to finish the last 2 miles. It was definitely an experience, and one that I am sure my mind played a good deal in controlling. I just kept thinking to myself "I can do this!" and "almost there...only x amount of time/miles left."

I walked off that treadmill today knowing that I can do anything and definitely feeling like the world is my oyster! I can't wait to see how next week's 10 mile run goes, and hopefully the weather will be nicer and maybe I can attempt to run it outside on base. I also plan on trying some energy gels during next week's long run, so we'll see how that goes. On the weight loss front, I tracked my points all week so far, and as of yesterday morning I was down 1.8 lbs, we'll see how holds up come Monday morning. I now leave you with my stats for this week:

Week 4, Day 1: 3.08 miles, 28:57, av pace: 9:23 min/mi
Week 4, Day 2: 5.00 miles, 49:42, av pace: 9:55 min/mi
Week 4, Day 3: 3.09 miles, 28:18, av pace: 9:09 min/mi
Week 4, Day 4: 8.25 miles, 1:21:14, av pace: 9:51 min/mi