Royal Parks Foundation Half Marathon

and they're off!

This past weekend, I had the chance to run my first ever half marathon race!  On a whim, I decided to sign up for the Breast Cancer Campaign team to run the Royal Parks Foundation Half Marathon, and I'm really glad I did.  While I wasn't religious about following my training schedule (2-3 days a week average, instead of the prescribe 4), I did make sure to keep up with my long distance runs on the weekend and it was great to keep training after the tri.  And it paid off!  I felt calm and relaxed on the day, and chugged on to a 2:13 time.  Not lightening speed, but certainly respectable, especially considered I split 1:06/1:07!

 showing off my medal (and so happy it's over!)

Look at that, I didn't even break a sweat!  But I did hobble around like a granny for a full 48 hours before I could even think about a swim.

I enjoyed the race so much, I'm thinking of signing up for the Brighton Half Marathon in February, to see if I can get closer to a 2 hour time.  And of course, the next obviousl step is the...Marathon (dun dun dun).  Unfortunately, Brighton and London are now full, but I have my eye on both the Belfast and Edinburgh Marathon (early and late May), so I have plenty of time to think about it.

Where has water-logged Kira gone??? Who would have never ever in a million years contemplated running 26.2 miles???  I dunno, but I'm really enjoying myself, and hope to keep up with the running bug :)

10 miler

I just ran the farthest I've ever run.  Booyah bitches.  10 miles (actually 9.8, damnit gmap-pedometer, why do you have to be so precise!).  I ain't fast.  I ain't pretty.  But I put one leg in front of the other, and, an hour and 40 minutes later, I arrived back where I started, albeit with very sore legs.

3 miles is easy peasy now.  5 miles is my normal 'go out and chug away' run, still feels good, but can be rough around the edges.  During triathlon training, I got into 7 and 8 miles, and they felt okay, just a bit longer than my 5-6 milers.  But I definitely felt the extra 2 miles today.  By the last 20 minutes, my knees started aching, and it became more and more difficult to maintain my pace.  But I pushed myself the last 5 minutes and finished strong, woot woot.  My legs will be sore tomorrow, but it's good to know I can do it!

And suddenly, 13 miles doesn't seem so bad...good thing because I'm running it in one month!  Sponsor me!

My running future

I haven't even done the triathlon yet, and I'm already onto my next big project - the Royal Parks Foundation Half Marathon on 10/10/10!

I had been contemplating a half marathon for awhile now, and wanted something to dive right into after the triathlon.  I've already pushed myself to 8 miles, so I feel like I could join into a 16 week plan at the half way point.  I looked at the Run to the Beat race, but it's the weekend before my *gasp* 26th birthday and I'd really rather relax that weekend :)  Then on Twitter, Zest Magazine tweeted that the Breast Cancer Campaign had two places left for the Royal Parks Foundation HM, so I got in contact with the BCC and two days later....Bob's your uncle!  With the triathlon on the 8th, and say 2 days off for good behaviour, that gives me officially 2 months (8 weeks and bit) to get myself into half-marathoning shape.  I'll scope out a few training plans, but I already have a workout strategy in mind to be honest.  I'd like to start doing yoga a bit more, and try to fit in some strength training.  My tentative post triathlon workout schedule looks a bit like this:

Mondays
Gym - 30-60 minutes on the cross trainer with 30-45 minutes weight training

Tuesdays
Run - 30-60 minutes, either intervals or hill runs

Wednesdays
Yoga - my gym has a class from 5-6, plus some jacuzzi action afterwards

Thursdays
Run - 30-60 minutes, either intervals or hill runs

Fridays
Gym - 30-60 minutes on the cross trainer with 30-45 minutes weight training

Saturdays
Run - long easy runs, working on increasing mileage

Sundays
Rest!

Most HM training plans have you do 3 mid-week runs, plus the longer Saturday runs.  However, I want to take that down to 2 mid-week runs, so I can give my legs a chance to recover and do some cross training as well.  And I've already managed to increase my distance to 8 miles with only 1-2 runs a week. 

I've finally reached the point where I (kinda, sorta, maybe) ... enjoy running.  I'm not sure how that happened, but I slowly started noticing things like, perferring a run to a bike ride, or pushing R to go out for a run (and not vice versa).  And then one Saturday morning, I said to R, 'I'm going to go a bit longer today, I'll meet you at home.'  I was actually enjoying myself and wanted to push myself further.  Well, K, you've got over 13 miles to push yourself, that's definitely further than you've done before!