Half Marathon Training Weeks 4 & 5: Complete failure

First, let's get the excuses out of the way. Cold, rainy weather…check. Christmas and New Years holidays…check. Spending too much time on Facebook and the Internet in general…double check!

The result: Not a lick of running for two weeks. Writing that is almost as embarrassing as posting my gut photo.

OK, so it's a new year and time for renewed action!

When my final class ended last night at 10:00pm, a nagging voice in my head told me that I should run when I got home. But the little devil on my other shoulder told me that it was already so late, and the weather was too cold, and I hadn't eaten dinner yet, and besides, tomorrow I'd have more energy….

Faced with this dilemma, I turned to my coworker Nick, who's also training, for some words of encouragement and motivation. I can't really remember what he said now, but whatever it was it did the trick. As soon as I got home I quickly changed into my running gear and bolted out the door, careful not to turn on the PC, grab a snack, or do anything else that might stop me.

I assumed that, after two weeks without any running, I would have lost the endurance that I'd built up. Surprisingly, I hadn't. In fact, I ran my best time since the beginning of training.

Instead of my usual 3 minutes run/2 minutes walk routine, I jogged 800m, no matter how long it took, followed by 1 minute of walking. After 35 minutes I wasn't completely exhausted and felt that I could continue for quite awhile longer. However, since I was out of practice I stuck to the 35 minutes as indicated in my schedule. Just knowing that I could have continued gave me renewed motivation and more assurance that it's definitely possible for me to complete the 21k in less than 3 hours.

I've added another column below—Minutes per Km—as an aid to track my progress.

Week	Date	Weight	Waist	Run	Minutes per Km
4 years ago	04/15/2008 (Arrival in Taiwan)	70 kg (155 lbs)	84 cm (33")	--
1	12/03/2012	75.5 kg (166 lbs)	94 cm (37")	30 minutes 3 km	10
	12/05/12			30 minutes 3 km	10
	12/08/12			-- [heavy rain]
2	12/10/12			30 minutes 3 km	10
	12/12/12			30 minutes 3 km	10
	12/15/12	76.5 kg (169 lbs) +1 kg	91 cm (36") -3 cm	57 minutes 6.5 km	8.7
3	12/17/12			33 minutes 4 km	8.2
	12/19/12			31 minutes 4 km	7.7
	12/22/12	76.3 kg (168 lbs) -0.2 kg	91 cm (36")	40 minutes 6 km	6.6
4	12/23~12/29	--	--	--
5	12/30~1/5/2013	--	--	--
6	12/07/13	75.9 kg (167 lbs) -0.6 kg	91 cm (36")	35 minutes 5.4 km	6.4