One month ...

One month until my first half-marathon!!! OMG, I’m not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing. No, of course it is a good thing. I still have a long way to go before I’m ready, but I’m heading in the right direction and will be ready, I’ sure. My long runs (which I do on Saturdays) will be 14km this Saturday, 16km the Saturday after that and 18km after that. Then on the Saturday week before the race, I will just do a 10km run to make sure that I’m not too tired as the race approaches. This is all very exciting. Still, I have been feeling a little discouraged lately. It feels like my progress is very slow and it is a little disheartening to be running so slowly. But, I’m trying to stay motivated (and succeeding) by reading a lot about running and watching endless Youtube videos. Trying to remember that this is a ‘marathon and not a sprint’!

I got a new gps/pulse clock :) It is a Garmin Forerunner 220. Simple but with all the things one needs, gps to measure distance and speed and heart rate monitor to measure effort. Had my first run on Tuesday and it went very well. It was an ‘easy’ aerobic base training run, which means one runs at 65-75% of max pulse. That is not very fast! Tomorrow I have an interval training waiting for me. The intervals will be sprints or hills, I haven’t decided, at 85-95% of max pulse. I’m looking into all those different interval training programs, there are a lot of them out there. One is, for example, where you run as fast as you can for 1min and walk/jog for 1min, and repeat maybe 10 times. As your form improves, you increase the time but keep the rest in between the same, and even shorten that as you improve more.  There is also the pyramid, run 1min as fast as you can, rest, than 2min, rest, than 3min, rest, than 4min, rest, than 5min, rest, than 4min, rest, 3min, rest, 2min rest, 1min. You can also measure distance instead of time. I think I’ll do one of those tomorrow. Which calls for another 6am wakeup call (or even earlier) as it is just too hot here in Oslo these days. I love the heat and love spending time at the beach or park soaking up the sun, but it does make running tricky and also, I get very lethargic, very slow and dazed and not very interested in vigorous activities.

I don’t have the energy to write anymore now so ...