7 weeks until the Konig Ludwig Half Marathon!

At the end of July I am running the Konig Ludwig Half Marathon with my friend Laura. It looks like an amazing race that goes through the base of the Bavarian Alps outside of Fussen. The race path runs by a beautiful lake near Neuschwanstein Castle (Mad King Ludwig's castle). I'm so excited for this race!! It initially caught my eye because it has my maiden name (Ludwig), and it is also named after a FANTASTIC brand of beer :)  When I was a kid, my dad had a poster of this castle hanging in the hallway at home. I used to dream that I was somehow related to this King Ludwig and could go to live in my distant relative's castle. Of course, we all grow up and realize that it is now just a tourist attraction. But the enchantment is still there.



The reason I am writing about this is because I need to stay accountable in my training. With all of the traveling we have done in the past few weeks, and the inconsistent schedule I have in Italy, it's difficult to stay on a set training schedule. To be sure that I am staying on task, I am going to write about my training each week. Hopefully this will keep me going since I don't have any running partners to hold me accountable.

If you have any suggestions on things I can do to improve my pace during my training please let me know!! My goal for this half marathon is to run it in 2 hours or less. I basically just started my training by running at a quicker pace than usual, and kept up with that. Hopefully it works in the end!! So far, it has helped me to increase my pace.

This week was week seven of my training, and there are seven weeks to go until the race. This will be my second half marathon- my first being the Gary Bjorklund half (at Grandma's) and I ran it in about 2 hours, 10 minutes. At the beginning of this training, I started from pretty much nothing since I hadn't been running for a few months. If I was lucky I would get a mile run in from time to time, but nothing serious. This week I was able to run five miles twice which was a big accomplishment for me. For some reason, the five mile mark is a big barrier for me- everything after that seems to come a lot easier. So... this was a big week in my training! Here is what I have done so far for this week:

Monday: 5 mile run, 47 minutes
Tuesday: 1 hour pilates
Wed: off
Thursday: 5 mile run, 45 minutes
Friday: 1 hour pilates
Saturday: 6.5 mile run planned  

I am very happy with my progress up to this point. Since I can remember, I have always been a 10 minute mile runner. Slowly I'm starting to change that :)