This week was my first week of training for the half marathon and I finished a little late! I told myself at the beginning of this that I wasn’t going to let weather become a factor in my training. I want to run in inclement weather, figuring it’ll only make me stronger for the race. But my “long run” this week came on Friday, when we had wind speeds up to 45 mph. I laid in bed listening to trees, wires, and our fence sway and bang in the wind and I thought, “No way. I may as well run in place! I probably won’t move at all if I go out there!” So instead of finishing on Friday, I took my final run of the week on Sunday morning. I don’t plan to train on Sundays in general, but it was nice that there were hardly any vehicles on the road.

Week one was a challenge. The temps were below freezing most of the mornings, making it hard to breathe well. I’m also training with a weighted vest, which I’ve never done before. I have 11 lbs of vest on while I run and that has added an additional breathing challenge. Why the weighted vest? My hope is to improve my strength, bone density, core, and give myself an improved race time by running the actual race without it. My pace is much slower than I’m used to with the vest and probably also due to the cold. It’s hard to be efficient when your body is fighting the elements. I keep my spirits high by reminding myself that the worse I start out, the more improvement I should see over the next nine weeks. (Right?!)

This week I have 30 minute progression run, a 20 minute recovery run (the last of the 20 minute runs for the rest of the training), and two 45 minute runs: an interval and an endurance run. Last week my goal was to just get through the cold and finish the runs. This week I would like to see small improvements in my time and endurance. And if not that, then my hope is to at least feel better/more efficient on my runs.

I have one more week of my strength training program, which is hypertrophy focused. Meaning, the goal is to lift as heavy as you can for a short amount of time to BUILD muscle, rather than maintain it the way condition training does. I’ll be glad to have it finished so I can focus more on my runs, rather than try to balance the two. I’m also revisiting the push up challenge that I completed in January: doing a push up for every date of the month. But of course this month–it’s with the vest! 🙂 If anything, I’ll at least have some killer triceps at the end of this–summer is coming! 😉 On to week two!

Here are some quick pics from last week. My weighted vest, the spring bingo card that’s FREE in my shop (in case you missed it, you can download it here), the kids “mining for chocolate chips” as we listen to The Endless Steppe on audio, Noah making potato pancakes to go along with his presentation on Poland, and Eli’s karate team warming up at their tournament on Saturday! Eli came away with second place in kata and fourth place in weapons. He did great!