Though I have completed more than 20 half marathons, I’m not good at training. Let me clarify — I’m very good at getting in the weekly long-distance mileage, I’m horrible at getting in the mid-week speed workouts.

So this year, because I am only doing a couple of halves, I decided to follow an intermediate training schedule as closely as possible and see what it does for my speed.

So far this week, I finished 8 X 400s as fast as possible, one 45-min “easy” day and tonight I did 3 X 1 mile at half marathon pace. Tonight’s workout was difficult because 1) I had never done 1-mile intervals before, 2) I wasn’t quite sure what half marathon pace would feel like if I wasn’t in a race. I’m assuming that by the time the race rolls around, I will know exactly what my race pace feels like.

My splits were 13:04, 12:55 and 12:50. I’m so excited that I got faster for each split. The other cool thing is, I have done half marathons in that pace range.

I missed one “easy” day this week due to rain and I’ll miss another easy day tomorrow because I have tickets to a concert. But I think I can make that up — it’s still early.

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