I picked a training plan

I have decided on the Hal Higdon half marathon training plan. I have talked to several people who have used his programs for half and whole marathon training and highly recommend them. I start the plan a week from today, Aug 7. It is a 12 week plan.
This week I passed 600 miles for the year so far! I had a good 8 mile run on Saturday in 90 degree weather! My neighbors think I am out of my mind! (so does my family!) I had an average pace of 10:14. I've run better 8 milers but it was nowhere near as hot. I went for an easy 3 mile run this evening. I left the house at 8:15pm, it was still light out but not sunny. I run on a road that has woods on both sides for almost a half mile. It was kind of dark on that road and I saw owls in the trees on the side of the road!! I've never seen owls while running before! Deer cross in front of me all the time, I see woodchucks, rabbits and raccoons, dogs and cats, cows and horses, sheep and llamas, I had a skunk run out into the road right in front of me this spring, now I can add owls to the list of animals I've seen while running!!

Happy Birthday to my sister tomorrow!!!! (oops, I haven't sent a card yet)

Tied my PR and won a prize!

I did pretty good in my race this morning. I tied my current PR of 23:57 and came in 4th in my age group! I have had 2 not so good races (1 of them was just plain BAD) in the last few weeks so I am really happy to be under 24 minutes again! They were giving prizes to the top 5 in each age division, most races only give 3 places a prize so I had the rare thrill of winning something!! My next race is in 3 weeks and it is a race that I won the masters division last year! I hope I can win it again this year. It's a very small race in the teeny tiny town I grew up in.

My first blog entry

Hi to anyone who might happen upon this blog. I am starting this blog to record my journey to my first half marathon.
My name is Laura, I am 43 years old, I live in SE Michigan.
I have been running 5K races for 3 years (PR 23:57) and decided to run my first half marathon this year. I decided to do this early in the spring. I picked a half marathon to enter and signed up for it in June.

I have looked at a bunch of half marathon training plans and have yet to pick one. Most are either 12 or 14 weeks long which is coming up for me in early August so I need to get one picked out!
I am running a 5K race tomorrow and another on Aug. 12 then I am going to concentrate on training for my half.

I am currently running 25 to 27 miles/week. I did my first 10 miler last Saturday, it went well for the first 9 miles, the last mile was really hard. I use a Garmin Forerunner 201 GPS device that I wear on my wrist to keep track of distance, time and pace. (I don't wear it to races, I just use a sports watch and keep my mile splits in races.) So far this year I have run 583 miles.

I am exicited about running the half marathon. I probably won't be posting much until I start a training program. I will be working on posting some pictures soon.