Ran my first ever full half marathon this week! :D

DanielleLCook

Hey all,

So a bit of background, I've run a fair few 5ks over the last year but haven't been pushing myself, having signed up to do a half marathon later on in May I've been so worried that I wouldn't be able to do it and finally I've had a break through!! Having run a 7k I then ran an 11k and the day before yesterday I ran a full 21k (13mile) route. It took nearly 3 hrs and has made me so determined to train like crazy for the next month to see how much I can improve my time!

I'm running the half marathon later this month for the charity Macmillan Cancer Care an absolutely AMAZING charity that helps so many people and families who are affected by cancer providing both physical and emotional support that is so crucial.

Thanks folks

Danni

SueInAz

Kudos to you! That first half marathon is quite an accomplishment!

Just a few words of caution, though. You can overtrain and you can hurt yourself by increasing your mileage too quickly. When training for a long race, you should never build up your weekly mileage by more than 10% per week. That means if you ran 10 miles total last week, you shouldn't run more than 11 miles total this week, 12.1 miles the following week, etc. Too many miles before your body is ready could cause shin splints and problems for your knees and ankles. There's nothing worse to a runner than training for a race only to be sidelined by an overtraining injury.

If you haven't already read up on half marathon training, the way to increase your speed is to increase it during your SHORT runs each week. Please don't run 13.1 miles over and over to see if you can do it faster. Hopefully that wasn't your plan but the way your post was written that's what it sounded like to me. Hill runs are also key for increasing your tempo during a race. My weekly schedule for 6 weeks before my first half marathon race involved two 6 mile weekday runs and a weekend run that was another 6 mile run alternated with an increasingly longer run every other week culminating in an 11 miler two weeks before the race. It was plenty of training. I wasn't worried so much about time the first race but I've worked to decrease my time for each succeeding race.

Good luck with your race!

Eric_DeCastro

good job. the only thing we have is a 5K route. so i run it twice. I want to run a half next year so I'll just be running it 4 times. and hope it's good enough.

DanielleLCook

I know I haven't trained in the best way, it's definitely key to up mileage slowly and steadily. I've read a lot of half marathon training schedules but left it all too late so wanted to just be able to get around the distance.. this month will be spent doing a range of smaller and longer runs to increase my strength and endurance. The last thing I want would be an injury and wouldn't encourage people to neglect their training like I did.

Going to do this one at the end of this month and then train properly for a better time and to see what I can do when I give it my all with proper training towards the end of the year!

Thanks for your advice