I have been running all summer (original post date of this blog entry is August 31, 2011, but I am backdating it to May 7, 2011) but haven't blogged about it. I will blog about my adventures in running for the summer and back date each blog post to the correct corresponding week. This is just for me personally to reflect on and if anyone wants to read about what I've experienced for the last 4 months.
Since about late 2006, Lisa and I had always had the goal of running a half marathon. I don't know how we came to this goal but it sounded like a good idea and would be something I could check off my list of things I've done in my life. Starting in December of 2006, Lisa and I started training for a half marathon that would take place on the weekend of March 4th, 2007. We used Hal Higdon's training program (to a degree) and were extremely dedicated to running. Since we didn't have a full 12 weeks, as suggested by the training, we fudged it to make it work. I was really proud of how far we came and how well we did, especially when we started running 9 miles in one day.
A couple of weeks before the half marathon Lisa got a message from Utah State University to come to a welcome weekend sort of thing to check out the campus. Well, I'm sure you can guess the rest, this weekend happened to be the same weekend of our half marathon. Needless to say, we never ran the half marathon and hadn't run one since. I was a little disappointed because we had trained so hard and did so well. I even thought about just running the 13.1 miles to see how well I could do... but I never did it. I wanted to have a "race day" like experience; unhindered by vehicles and other such distractions on a 13.1 mile run but figured I couldn't recreate that... I did learn that the weather for the half marathon was awfully cold (start temp was possibly in the high 30s) so that did make me feel a little better about not running the race. (Oh and we got to go skiing for free up at USU so it was worth it!)
A couple of other times we attempted at training again for a half but other things kept on getting in the way: school, kids, school, and kids, etc. Last summer (the summer of 2010) Lisa started training again for a half marathon for late summer. She had a Salt Lake City half marathon in her mind and was doing well with her training. She had wanted to do the local, Top of Utah Half Marathon but that one is so popular that it fills up really quickly (a couple of months before the race). Motivated by Lisa's running, I started running too. She would run when it was light out, and I would run at night. But as the distance and time commitments started building up, Lisa couldn't keep up with her training; mostly because of the neediness of Olsen (and her willingness to get things done - school work). So she had told me that she wanted me to try the SLC half marathon that was later in the summer. It would be a short training span but I thought I could do it. Well, the logistics of getting down to SLC and participating in the half marathon didn't work out, plus, if I remember correctly, I had something else I had to do on that weekend. So we still haven't completed our goal of running a half marathon.
This year, back in April, I decided to take a different approach. I signed up for the Top of Utah half marathon way early. So therefore I was committed to run this race!
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