13.1 Miles

In about 8 weeks my goal is to run a half marathon, which is 13.1 miles. When people talk about their bucket lists or in other words the things they want to do before they die, I have always came up with the thought that it would be pretty awesome to run a marathon. Well thats how this whole shindig got started. I was talkin to my FHE brother Daniel and he asked me to name three things I wanted to do before I died. So I told him...
1. See the Northern Lights
2. Learn to play the violin
3. Run a Marathon
Well he loved my list of course. But we really started talking about the marathon and he said he would love to run one too. So we started getting all worked up and excited, thinking we could train together and run one at the end of the summer. Well between our two schedules we didnt find any that worked for the both of us so we started looking at half marathons, and we found one.... only its only eight weeks away from saturday. (June 5th, in Sun Valley, Idaho) Which means training and training fast. So all this was decided sunday evening and we started training the very next day. So this week we started with some 3 milers. We run every monday, wednesday, thursday and saturday which gives us tuesday, friday and sunday off. The schedule for the nine weeks of training goes something like this...
Week One: M-3, T-off, W-3, Th-3, F-off, Sat-4, S-off = 13 miles
Week Two: M-3, T-off, W-4, Th-3, F-off, Sat-6, S-off = 16 miles
Week Three: M-3, T-off, W-5, Th-3, F-off, Sat-8, S-off = 19 miles
Week Four: M-3, T-off, W-5, Th-3, F-off, Sat-10, S-off = 21 miles
Week Five: M-4, T-off, W-5, Th-4, F-off, Sat-11, S-off = 24 miles
Week Six: M-4, T-off, W-6, Th-4, F-off, Sat-12, S-off = 26 miles
Week Seven: M-4, T-off, W-5, Th-4, F-off, Sat-9, S-off = 22 miles
Week Eight: M-3, T-off, W-4, Th-3, F-off, Sat-8, S-off = 18 miles
Week Nine: M-3, T-off, W-3, Th-Walk 2, F-off, Sat-13.1, S-off = 21.1 miles

Which Gives a grand total of.... 180.1 Miles in 9 weeks.
I'm only in the first week right now and its feeling pretty impossible... but Im also pretty determined so we will see what happens over the next couple weeks. It was really hard starting because I havent really ran much since August, and the air is so much thinner up here because the elevation is so much higher. So training my lungs and body to run up here is alot harder than back home. My first three mile run was alot harder than I thought it was going to be, I was struggling to get enough oxygen almost the whole run. But I can already feel myself getting better and its only been a few days, I can feel myself getting stronger too, and my endurance better. Im just hoping it improves enough, fast enough to run this half marathon.
But I have already gone 9 miles! Plus plenty of walking in between to help keep my muscles loose.Which is pretty good I think. Saturday is my first increase, its only by one mile but one mile feels like forever when you are running :)

If you want to check out the site here it is
http://www.sunvalleyhalfmarathon.com/Race_Details.php