I've officially made it through the first month of half marathon training, and I managed to fit in every workout in my training plan. There were plenty of times I had to get creative with the schedule and shift things around to accommodatemy husband's work schedule and childcare, but I got it done. 

Weeks three and four were cold, but manageable, except for the long run from week four. That fell right before the massive snow/ice storm that hit DC and was quite unpleasant. 

Week Three Recap

Sunday started with a tempo run with the jogging stroller. Nothing like starting the week off with a hard run while pushing an extra 60 pounds. Didn't have any trouble hitting the prescribed hard heart rate zones in this one, but did have a hard time keeping my heart rate at an easy enough level in the warm up and cool down. Celebrated with treats for both of us afterward. 

Monday was a 45-minute easy run, which felt delightful after Sunday's run. 

Tuesday was full body strength training followed by another dreadful hill workout on Wednesday. Hill sprints are just torture for me. 

Thursday was a rest day and Friday was my long run -- only 50 minutes, so still not super long. 

Week Four Recap

Week four was a cut back week and mentally it was just what I needed. The first part of January felt like a real sprint at work with everyone "circling back" after the holidays. So I was so glad to have a week of slightly shorter runs. Something about a 30-minute run just feels mentally so much easier than a 40-minute run.

Also we potty trained over the weekend between weeks 3 and 4, so I was glad to have shorter runs since it meant I wasn't gone for quite as long during the holiday weekend. 

Sunday was a tempo run, but sans stroller, I had to push a lot harder to get my heart rate into the appropriate zones for the hard sets. 

Monday was a 30-minute easy run. 

Tuesday was a rest day and Wednesday was just regular sprints! I hope that means evil hill sprints are behind me. 

I was able to squeeze in another long run on a Friday without too much schedule disruption or early morning wake ups because it was only 40 minutes. Have I mentioned I love a cut back week. It was in the teens on this run though and I had on so many layers I'm not sure how I managed to run. 

I also threw in a day of strength training somewhere in there, but I couldn't tell you what day it was at this point. 

I had debated pulling up a tempo run from week five and tackling it on Saturday since I knew the snowstorm that was coming was going to prevent me from running for a couple of days. But I woke up Saturday morning and my legs were feeling pretty heavy, so I didn't do that. Didn't seem worth it to risk an injury.

 Four weeks down, 8 more to go.