In four weeks I am going to run my first half marathon. I am entering the last third of my training schedule and will have my last long run this weekend. It's going to be a 20 km (12.4 mile) run and the longest distance I will be covering during my training. I am pretty confident that I'll be able to finish that run without any major problems since I have been steadily building my endurance since January. I have been running 3 - 4 times a week. Throughout the week I usually do shorter but faster runs and on the weekends I have been steadily increasing the distance. My long runs so far were a 16 km (10 mile) and a 18 km (11 mile) run and I felt pretty good about my performance. I did go slow as my schedule asked for the runs to be at 70% of my HF max. I am hoping that I can increase the speed during the actual race and I would like to be running at about 80%. But since this is my first half marathon I am also going to play it safe and am thinking about going for a negative split. That would have me starting the race off pretty slow (maybe 75%) until the halfway point. I will then see how I feel that day and try to pick up the pace for the second half of the run to finish that one faster than the first. But all in all this is not about results. I will be truly happy and excited if I can cross that finish line with a smile on my face! I'll let you know how it goes!
