5 Weeks Until my First Half-marathon

Well today's a rest day after the 8 miler yesterday, I am feeling pretty good, no soreness at all. Although I think I ate to much yesterday in response to the giant calorie burn of the run.

The next few weeks I will average 18 miles (long run 6 miles), 22 miles (long run 10 miles), 20 miles (long run 8 miles) and 14 miles (long run 5 miles) follows the race week, where I do 7 miles of short days leading up to the race on April 6.

I am also putting a sprinkling of weight training into the program twice a week generally on Mondays and Wednesday. I will have a more organized program of weight training during my 20 week program leading up to the marathon I intend to run. Right now I am looking at a program that will have runs a week (Tuesday, Thursday and long run Sunday). The weekly mileage peaks at 37 miles, currently my thinking will is to use light weights on Wednesday and then work on legs on Friday, giving me a day of leg rest before the long run. Then on Saturday I would do some stretching and pylometrics, although I might do this on Mondays.

The running portion of this is the prime importance, so if I need rest it will come out of the weight training portion of the program.

So this week the program is:

• 60 minutes on Tuesday at an easy pace
• 40 minutes on Wednesday
• 50 minutes tempo run on Friday
• 30 minutes on Saturday
• Long run of 6 miles

So the total for the week, should be between 18-21 miles depending on my pace during the week.