Eugene Training and a Run for Boston

Since talking about my decision to switch from the marathon to the half, I haven't shared much about my training.  As with my last two half marathons, I adapted the Train Like a Mother 'Own It' half marathon plan.  I've been following all of the prescribed weekday workouts (mainly lots of good intervals and tempos), with the exception of the long runs.  Even though I've been feeling great after a month of therapy (from a great chiro), I wanted to take the longer ones by feel.  Surprisingly, I've done as much or more preparation for this half as for my last two.  For the See Jane Run half, I did one 10 miler about three weeks prior and one 9 miler about two weeks out from race day.  Before the Seattle half, I did a 10 and then 12 mile run.  Other than that, my long runs were around 6 miles.  In training for Eugene, I really got a confidence boost by using the Hot Chocolate 15K as a training run and kept my long workouts in the 8-9 mile range until doing a 10 and 11 miler in the last few weeks leading up to my visit to Track Town.  

I'm really hoping to keep around 2:05, or at least get it done in less than 2:07 for some comeback mojo/redemption from my meltdown in the Seattle half.  But my longstanding goal keeps looming in the back of my head: maaaaaybe I'll be feeling SO great that I'll eke out a sub 2 hour race.  So, yeah, that's always in the back of my head.  It may be my pie in the sky goal after having my little hamstring setback, but I hear Eugene is magic...  Plus, the weather in the Pacific Northwest is absolutely gorgeous right now, and the forecast for Eugene is lookin' GOOD.

To cap off my training, on Monday I participated in Seattle's #BostonStrong run, which was a nice and easy 5K loop around Greenlake alongside more than 200 of our running community with funds donated to The One Fund.

beautiful day for a run

There's already such great camaraderie around runners (as I've mentioned before) and since the events in Boston, it can be felt more than ever.  It was so great to see so many familiar faces.

Rebecca, Meghan, me, Lauren (pic stolen from Rebecca)

  I can't wait to see even more familiar faces this weekend: there are TWENTY of us from the Oiselle team running and probably half as many coming just to cheer!  You can check out the list of who's racing here.  Is is wrong to admit that I'm almost equally excited to sit by myself in my car for 5 hours each way listening to audiobooks?  Wait, don't answer that.