Half marathon on the horizon

On January 17 2010 I have a date. Not quite a 'speed date', but hopefully close to 1:39:56, my current personal best for the half marathon.

Couple of things, or maybe three, standing between me and a new half-marathon PR. For one thing I'm dragging around quite a bit of extra weight nowadays, having gained about 5 lbs recently. All in all I think I could improve my speed if I were lighter by about 15 lbs total. Also, I'm not averaging enough miles per week to run 13.1 miles at the pace which I would need to.

So starting today I'm back on the McDougall's MWL (Maximum Weight Loss) regime, and will be extra careful with the portion sizes. At least for the first few weeks, a food diary will help to keep things on track. There won't be a problem increasing the average miles per week. That's the fun part. It will help to be a bit more structured so I will follow a half marathon program from Brad Hudson's 'Run Faster' book. It worked for my last half mary PR, so I will re-introduce my weekly mile repeats on Tuesday, some longer runs on Saturdays, and perhaps double up on runs one or twice per week.

The third thing which might stymie my training program? Another trip to Africa, back to Botswana for a little more than 2 weeks, early in December. I might have to prevail upon the camp management to run me out to the airstrip for a few runs!

This morning I managed a very soggy 6.5 miles with Daisy along Terry Hershey trail, including 9 short hill sprints.