Owens Corning Half Marathon Training Recap: Week 2

I’ll be recapping each week of my training leading up to the Owens Corning Half Marathon in April. I’m running with Dave’s Spring Marathon In-Training (MIT) for 16 weeks leading up to race day. If you’re local and interested in joining, you can still sign-up for Dave’s MIT through January 31st. Check out the Mercy Health Glass City Marathon weekend too!

Week two included two more runs in Austin, TX, where the weather was this runner’s dream.

On Monday, it was clear that while 8:56 is my goal half marathon pace in April, it is (unsurprisingly) a tough pace right now. It didn’t help that I made the mistake of following the overall average pace on my Garmin, and not the average pace of the current split in the first mile of my tempo workout. I was running at least 30 seconds too fast until I realized my mistake.

I should’ve known right away when I was sticking too close to my speedier husband; he was running his own workout ahead of me on the trail. That little fumble tired me out faster than normal, and the third mile was just plain hard. I’d say I’m out of speedy shape, but I think I’m out of a shape I’ve actually never been in…but I’m working on it.

I was hard on myself after Monday’s run, but I’ve decided it provided a solid status check on where I stand in week 2 of training. If it all goes according to plan, it may provide a great point to look back on and see how far I’ve progressed. But in the moment, it sucked. I was hot, tired, a mildly nauseous.

Tuesday’s run along the Colorado River, at a nice and easy pace, felt great in comparison. We finished with a final pilgrimage to JuiceLand.

By the time we flew home to Ohio on Tuesday night, I was so relieved the weather was above a negative windchill that I didn’t even consider the possibility of ice. There were three (or four?) easy miles scheduled for Wednesday, but I made it 2.5. I ran in the street to avoid the terrible sidewalks, but less than a half mile in, I stopped to move further out of the way of a car, stepped onto black ice, and my whole left side hit the pavement. It could’ve been much worse; thank god I didn’t have the momentum of a run. I stuck it out another 2 miles, but I was shaken up from the fall and happily ended the run earlier than planned when I reached my house. Happy winter running, friends.

Thursday’s track workout was better than last week. I’d been once before, I knew what to expect, and according to our coach, my pack was running our “hard” minutes at 8:10, when the goal was 8:40. I’ll take it. Every other week we begin at 6:45p instead of 6:00p, and the later time has been an adjustment. It’s a great change to run a speed workout with a group, but the evening runs are weird for a morning runner. It has, however, been an excellent opportunity to keep the hard days hard with Pure Barre in the morning.

On Saturday, I met the Dave’s MIT groups at Wildwood for our first official group run. Last weekend’s run was cancelled due to the cold, but the -1 windchill on this day didn’t stop us. I dressed well for the cold, and I had a lot of fun after overcoming this introvert’s panicked, internal dialogue.

Special shout out to the Oiselle bird who shared the layering magic tip of Spandos under a second layer of tights; this was a game changer, and I’ll be using it on every super cold day. I had an Asics balaclava to wear over my earband, but I didn’t pull it up before I started running, and then I didn’t get the chance because doing anything with mittens is impossible. The end result? Frozen, sweaty hair. So gross. So cool.

• Monday: 1 warm-up mile, 3 @ half marathon pace (8:56, 9:03, 9:04), and 1 cool-down mile
• Tuesday: 4.2 easy miles
• Wednesday: 2.5 easy (icy) miles
• Thursday: (am) Pure Barre (pm) second Dave’s MIT track workout at BGSU: 1 mile warm-up, 2 minutes, 6 x 3 minutes, 2 minutes hard with a 1 minute jog in between, cool-down
• Friday: Rest day
• Saturday: 6 mile long run
• Sunday: Pure Barre
• Weekly mileage = 22.3 miles, 2 PB