My first half marathon: training

In the four months I didn't blog, I trained for and ran my first half marathon.  Though it's old news now, and I'm actually training for my second half marathon, I still wanted to recap my experience.

The only reason I decided to run a half marathon was because I won free training with a running coach and a running group called Runaway Moms.  Coach Wendy sent out the training plan, made the routes, set out water on the long runs, taught me how to stretch, pushed me when I wouldn't push myself and reminded me that I was capable of doing this.  I can't express how much this group of women encouraged me through the whole process, cheering me on at every little victory.

The longest I had run before I started training for the half was 3.5 miles.  Slowly building up my mileage was exciting!  Seeing that I could keep going and that I could push myself to get the higher miles was so rewarding.  The weekend that I was going to tackle 7 miles was a big one for me.  I had run 6 miles twice before and completed a 10k (6.2 miles) and I was ready to make another jump in mileage.  The morning came and I was genuinely excited to hit that mileage milestone but it was pouring rain complete with thunder and lightning!  No running for me.  My motivation was gone and I wasn't sure how I would mentally make it through those 7 miles.  That's when Hayley joined me for my training.  She went on almost every long run with me from then out.  She was already registered to run the same race I was training for, and rather than train at her pace, she stuck with me though the rest of my training and the entire race.  I am so thankful for the friendship that we build and then fun times we had!

 Since Curtis had trained for and run a half marathon earlier in the year, I knew the time commitment it would take for our entire family.  And not only was I training for the half, Curtis was also training for the same race.  Throughout our training, he always put my runs first.  Never once did I feel guilty over leaving the kids and him to go run for over two hours.  After my long runs, he would be ready with ice, compression socks, chocolate milk and ibprophen. Curtis was a constant source of praise and encouragement as well as advice.  During hard runs, he would text me with words of encouragement, reminding me to finish strong.  And on one really rough run, he came to get me from the side of the road but pushed me to try that run again and get the mileage I needed.  There are so many cliched analogies I could make about training for/running a half marathon and marriage.  But instead, I'll just say that I truly could not have done what I did without my amazing hubby!

 Training for a half marathon is hard.  But it is worth it!  There were times when I was confident that I had made a terrible decision.  But I'm thankful for the awesome people who surrounded me and encouraged me to keep going, even when I didn't want to.