Palm Beach Half Marathon Training Plan

Since I registered for the Palm Beach half marathon about 36 hours after finishing Philly, I knew I needed to get some sort of plan together to 1. allow my body to rest and recuperate and 2. prepare for Palm Beach.

Last year after running Palm Beach, I basically just sat around for 4 days, cringing with each step I took. My body was completely shot after those 13+ miles. This time around I felt much, much better. I attribute that mainly to being in better shape and compression. I was still a bit sore on Monday but nothing like the pain I felt last year. I knew I’d give myself at least 2 days of rest and then take it from there.

Here’s what last week ended up looking like:

Monday was a complete rest day with a short walk with Ginger until she got completely freaked out by a skateboard and practically dragged me home with her tail between her legs. Tuesday I walked 2.5 miles on the treadmill to loosen up and did some minimal strength training on my upper body so I’m calling that an “active” rest day. After that, I felt good enough to jump right back into things with a slower 3 mile run, a solid 4 mile tempo run and some cross training.

My intention on Sunday was 10 miles. Earlier in the week I was trying to decide between 8-11 miles for my long run on Sunday and thought 10 was the best to mentally make me feel prepared enough for Palm Beach (physically, I know I’m fine.) After 5 miles though, my legs were just tired. They felt heavy, a bit sore and just not fully “repaired” after Philly. I knew by mile 5 that I was going to cut the run short and felt completely fine with that decision. 8.1 miles is plenty the week before a half and I’d rather have fully rested legs than push myself to do 2 extra miles when there’s really no physical benefit to it.

This week is going to be a little crazy with my work schedule and traveling to Florida on Thursday, but here’s what the plan looks like as of now:

It’s very similar to what I did the week before Philly and since that seemed to work, why mess with things?

My main goal this week is just to stay healthy. Last year I got a sore throat 2 days before the race which turned into a full blown cold the day after the race. I’ll be the freak in the airport washing my hands every 5 minutes and breaking out the hand sanitizer. If I didn’t think people wearing masks in airports were complete weirdos, I might consider that too but, I’m pretty sure Ulysses would pretend to not know me if I whipped out a mask in public.

If you made it this far, congratulations. Your reward? Seeing some hideous pictures of me from Philly.

Thank you, photographers for making my decision of whether or not to buy an outrageously priced race picture easy.

I don’t think there has ever been a race picture of me that I don’t look like absolute death in and we can add these to the list now too. The funny thing is, I usually see the photographers and try to purposely smile. If this is my “smile” I’m kind of scared to see what I look like the rest of the time.

Besides a new PR, getting a good race picture is my goal for Sunday. I’m thinking it might be the harder of the two.

Have you ever raced back to back races? If so, how did you train?

Do you ever buy the race pictures? Ulysses bought a picture from the first 5K we ever did of me sprinting to the finish. I look absolutely “special” in it. I had stuck my iPhone in my bra because I didn’t have an arm band at the time and as I was sprinting it was falling out so I had one hand on my chest to hold the phone in there, the other arm flailing about, and a look on my face like someone is torturing me. It would probably scare a small child.

Gina Matsoukas

About

Gina Matsoukas is the writer, founder, photographer and recipe developer of Running to the Kitchen — a food website focused on providing healthy, wholesome recipes using fresh and seasonal ingredients as much as possible. Her work has been featured in numerous media outlets both digital and print, including MSN, Huffington post, Buzzfeed, Women’s Health and Food Network.