After years of injuries, pregnancy complications, almost dying in child birth, the longest postpartum recovery ever and the slow, slow build to get some of my running endurance back, I am finally training for a half marathon. 

I haven't run one since 2021 -- nearly 4.5 years.

It's hard to believe it's been that long.

I spent most of 2022 dealing with hip and hamstring stuff. I graduated from PT in the early days of my pregnancy. 

And I ran until my 20-week appointment when they found a serious complication, and I was forbidden from anything strenuous. 

I thought I'd get back to running fairly quickly after my child was born. I spent enough time researching how to heal from C-sections and did a million core stabilizing exercises in the early days to rebuild strength. 

But then more complications, more surgeries, more recovery time and suddenly we're deep in 2024 before I'm physically able to run, and I'm back at work and still nursing and juggling all that.  Trying to train for anything was a big no for me. 

And that brings us to the end of last year.  I ran 3 races in October -- two 5Ks and a 10K -- none of which I managed to blog about. I felt like I was finally coming out of some of the fog and trauma that 2025 unleashed, and had found some of my running endurance again. 

It was the longest rebuild ever, but I finally felt ready to dive into half marathon training. 

So here we are, two weeks in and still feeling good about my decision to sign up. I'm following the same training plan I followed for the races I ran in 2021. It's a plan based on heart rate, which I found last time really helped me focus on keeping easy runs easy and hard runs hard. It also helped me recover better and keep most injuries at bay. 

I do four runs and a couple of strength sessions each week. 

Week 1 Recap

Week 1 was a little bit of a mess because it was the week between Christmas and New Years, and I had travel at both ends of the week. 

I had to get real creative with the workouts and shifted things around a lot. 

The first two runs were at my parents' house on their treadmill because there was ice on the ground. The first workout was a hard hill run, which honestly the treadmill is great for. The second was an easy steady state run. 

When I got back home, I took a rest day and then had another hard workout and my "long run" for the week on back to back days. This worked only because my long run was only 40 minutes. So I squished a week's worth of running into five days instead of seven with my travel. 

Not ideal, but I was proud that I fit all the workouts in. It felt important to set that kind of tone the first week. 

Week 2 Recap

The second week was a little bit better. I largely followed the training program as it was laid out. 

Sunday was a hard tempo run, which I did with the running stroller for an extra challenge (and because taking my kid was the only way the run was going to happen).

Monday was a steady state run and some strength training. 

Tuesday was a rest day, which was so needed because I could definitely tell I was getting sore.

Wednesday was a killer hill workout. I hate hill workouts so much. But I'm trying to keep it together and not start skipping them yet, like I know I likely will as motivation wanes during later training weeks. Conveniently there is a pretty steep and long hill close to my house, so I did an easy warm up and then did 90 second sprints up the hill with a two-minute recovery in between. I was sucking wind by the end.

Thursday was more rest and Friday was a my long run because my husband had to work the weekend, and I didn't want to have to do a stroller run for a long, slow, easy run. Nothing about running with the stroller is easy. 

Overall the first two weeks of training were really solid. As I look ahead, I can already tell I'm going to have to keep getting creative with my schedule to accommodate some more weekends that my husband has to work and some random appointments and other commitments we already have on the calendar. I'm super glad for the running stroller. I suspect there will be plenty of times I'll need to use it to ensure my runs get done. 

Flexibility is also key to any training plan, but I think this time more than ever, I'm going to have to be adaptable, shift workouts, and find a true love for the pitch black, very cold early mornings to make sure I can fit everything in.