Again, I went looking for a training plan, this time for a half-marathon.  This time, I settled on the plan from Half.com.  Why?  To be honest, because it looked relatively simple.  With only one long day per week, I could do that run early on Saturday morning, and the rest of the workouts could be done on my lunch breaks.

The curious thing about training to finish a long distance run is that it really isn’t that difficult, as long as you’re not interested in how fast you do the run.  I had 15 weeks to train, and the plan basically consisted of running 4 times a week, with one of those days being a long run.  Each week, I added 1 mile to the long run distance.  And, it wasn’t mandatory that I keep running for the entire distance.  If I needed to walk for a bit, that was O.K.  I just had to keep moving.  So this became more about mental discipline than it was about physical ability.

Don’t get me wrong, the physical training was hard too, but my conclusion about the entire training process was that it was more about what happened in my head than with my feet.  I also learned something interesting about the activity of running.  It is very peaceful to run during a light snowfall.  I guess the falling snow deadens sound, so when you run, the only sound you can really hear is that of crunching snow.  Sound nice?  Surprisingly, I found it really enjoyable.