Today I did my long run for the week, and it’s drawn some real conclusions for me.

I’ve been following the half marathon training schedule, but I’ve had so many questions along the way. Today I finally arrived at some answers. I’m not going to be ready to run a half marathon in April. Not unless I push myself likely to the point of hurting myself. My body isn’t ready for this.

All the way up to 7 miles it was hard but bearable. The past 2 weeks of 8 mile long runs are on a whole different level. I’m just not ready to progress beyond it. Maybe I never will be. So for now I’ll be keeping my long runs at 7 miles. Once that becomes easy, we’ll see about increasing it.

What does this mean? Nothing really. I refuse to give up on running. I’ve been doing this and I’ll keep doing it. And if I’m ever ready for a half marathon, then I’ll go and do it. I thought that because I’d been working so hard and following the training the way people who are actually planning to run it were, that I needed the big goal at the end. I had to do it because I’d been working my way toward it.  But I don’t feel like that’s necessarily true right now. Maybe it’s the end goal, but it’s too soon to head for it this spring. So I’ll keep working and I’ll get there when my body is ready to get there.

I’m proud of how far I’ve come… in January I was running one or two miles at a time. It’s the end of February now and I’m running 4-7 miles at a time, 5 days a week. I can do that. I can keep doing that.