On June 6, I completed my first half marathon! For a full recap of the race, check out this post, and for my reflections on training and how I overcame previous injuries, check out this post.

The race was the culmination of months of training, including other races!

Here’s the training plan I created for the half marathon. It’s a bit unusual because my friend and I started training just after completing the Cherry Blossom 10 Miler, so we weren’t starting from scratch… more just continuing what we were doing and slightly increasing mileage! (scroll down to see our original 10 miler training plan)

Highlights:

1. We’ll only be running 3 days a week – this just works best for me in terms of avoiding overuse injuries. We’ll have one long run, one hilly run, and one speed work run, which will usually be done on the treadmill (or a track) alternating sprints and jogging.
2. We’ll still be doing strength and cross training on our days off, including yoga.
3. We still have one scheduled rest day a week.
4. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I’ll be doing kickboxing with LA Boxing instead of cross/strength training on my own, which usually consisted of 30 to 40 minutes on the elliptical and various strength moves with free weights or weight machines. If I feel like this is too much and I need another rest or yoga day (especially the day after some of those long runs), I’ll take it!
5. I’ll be icing my knees/legs and foam rolling after every run, no matter how short.

…

Here’s our previous training plan for the Cherry Blossom 10 Miler (we weren’t starting from scratch, so if you are, you will want to build up to this more slowly):

Here and here are the original training plan posts, if you want to see what others had to say about my plans.

Race recaps:

• Zooma Half Marathon  (Annapolis, MD) – June 2010
• Cherry Blossom 10 Miler (Washington D.C.) – April 2010
• St. Patrick’s Day 8k (Washington D.C.) – March 2010
• 10k Turkey Trot (St. Petersburg, FL) – November 2010
• Army Ten Miler (Washington, D.C.) – October 2010

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