For about the past year and a half I have been talking -mainly in passing- about my desire to participate in a half-marathon.  I was a pretty avid, though leisurely, runner during my last year-and-a-half of college.  Like many other of my most enjoyable activities though, running got put on the back burner once I started law school. Sure, I’ve done four or five 5K races in the last 3 years, but the occasional 3.1 mile race does not a half-marathon runner make!

About a two months ago, my friend Lizzi discovered the Disney World Wine and Dine Half-Marathon.  After minimal research, Lizzi, my other friend Cassidy, and I decided this race was a must and we agreed to register as soon as we all had the funds.  That ended up being last week.  So it’s official: come no later than 12:45am on October 1, 2011 I will have run my first half-marathon!!!  Though I wouldn’t normally be thrilled to run a race at 10pm, this race is different: first, the route trails through three of the beautifully lit Walt Disney World Theme Parks; second, all the characters will be out and cheering us on during the race; and last, the race ends with a huge Finish Line Cocktail party at Epcot that lasts until 3am!! 

The route.

As soon as we decided to participate, I started researching a bunch of different half-marathon training programs on the Internet.  Most are designed to be 8-10 weeks long for intermediate to advanced runners.  Since I am obviously neither of those, I borrowed from all the programs I found and designed my own personal half-marathon training program to span the five months during which I would be training.  Because I have so much time to train, I set an ambitious, but I think achievable,  goal to finish the race in under 2:45:00 - with the specific goal of finishing in 2:25:00 (slightly more than 11min./mile).

I started training at the beginning of May as soon as finals/law school ended, but  fell slightly off track (double pun!) two Saturday-nights ago when I endured a pretty serious knee injury that forced me to take about 10 days off :(.

My knee is still seriously scraped up, but since I have been able to walk normally for the past five days I decided to venture back out there yesterday morning!  I was really disappointed when it seemed that all the progress I had made completely disappeared (I struggled to complete 2.5 miles).  Luckily, today was much better.  I went for an indoor run at my potential, new gym (more on this another time).  I think it was mainly the incredible environment - a huge, dark, cardio-theater screening “The Hangover”- that helped me push myself to run 3.7miles NON-STOP in 42 minutes.  Though this isn’t a very fast pace, I was very pleased to discover that not all progress had been lost!  Technically, this was even new progress as I have never run more than a 5K without any breaks for walking or stretching.  Plus, watching the last 45 minutes of a hilarious movie while burning some serious cals was probably the best study break I could have taken!

Based on my progress today, I estimate that I could run 5 miles straight if I REALLY pushed myself.  This is obviously very exciting, but its still not even half way to a half-marathon.  But, to be honest, I feel incredibly proud anyway since just a short few days ago, I felt like I could hardly run 2 full miles.  This also pumps me up even more to continue my training and watch the distance grow.  I can already tell that this will be one of the most physically challenging things I’ve ever accomplished, and I am super excited to do so!