Progress

"Sign up for a 5k, it will totally motivate you!"

I didn't believe this at all, even though I read it everywhere. When I signed up for my first 5k in the early spring it didn't serve to motivate me, it only stressed me out. I was sick for weeks leading up to it so that is definitely part of the reason but it really didn't motivate me.

I've proven myself wrong though. Being signed up for the half marathon has DEFINITELY motivated me to stay on my current training program. If I didn't sign up there would have been so many times in the last month that I'd have procrastinated or skipped running. There has only been 2 days that we haven't run (or run/walked) so far and that was because of specific events - one was Halloween weekend where we hosted a party for about 20 people on Saturday and then I went with C to our mom's house on Sunday. No long run for us that weekend but I did spend most of the entire Saturday standing and cooking and decorating and cleaning. :)

Anyway, we've been kicking ass and I still can't believe we are doing this. C is officially registered as well now. We have air and hotel booked. I received my race number and final instruction email. I'm in corral 31 - it's gonna be a long, chilly wait at the starting line!

We've found, to our surprise, that we can jog longer distances than we ever thought we could.

• On Oct. 3rd we jogged 3.5 miles straight for the first time.
• On Oct. 12th we jogged 4 miles straight for the first time.
• On Oct. 17th we jogged 6 MILES straight!! We couldn't believe it. We still can't.

Since then we've gone up and down in our run mileage, sometimes walking part way, and we are still getting faster, little by little.

Here's one of our recent awesome (for us anyway!) runs:

11/17/10
Run Time: 1:08:05
Run Distance: 5.00 miles
Ave Pace: 13:36/mi

Mile 1: 13:30
Mile 2: 13:31
Mile 3: 13:55
Mile 4: 13:39
Mile 5: 13:28

Originally when I contemplated the half marathon I thought if we could run the first 3 miles and walk the rest we would still do pretty well. I didn't really see myself being able to run very much further than 3 miles. Now I know I can. Now I think we have a good shot at running the first HALF of the half marathon. Holy crap.