This past weekend officially kicked off my Pittsburgh Half Marathon training. I’ve been running and exercising (mostly) regularly but was waiting until after the holidays to really begin ramping up my training for a few reasons.

First, it was the holidays and I wanted to spend my time fully enjoying and being present for downtime with my family and husband. I ran and went to the gym (with my momma!) while I was in Cincinnati but didn’t want to stress about getting certain workouts or miles in.

But more so, I held off on ramping up because I’m looking to take advantage of a free training group the running store in my neighborhood, TrueRunner, offers. The store is offering a weekly track workout on Wednesday and a long run group on Saturdays. I’ve never trained with a group before – I’ve always done week-day training by myself and long runs either solo or with a friend running the same race. I’m excited to have a group that will challenge me and teach me what it takes to actually run faster.

Truth be told, I’ve only ever used the Hal Higdon 12-week training plan so starting to train in January, nearly 4 months from race day, seems aggressive. But also knowing I’m starting with no long distance running, the extra weeks will ease me back into it with 4 and 5 mile long runs the first few weeks.

I’ve mapped out my training to include running but also OrangeTheory Fitness classes. I go to my Pittsburgh OTF 2x a week currently and love the workout; I’m not willing to give it up for the next 4 months! We end up running 2+ miles on the treadmill in class anyway so until it doesn’t feel good or isn’t fun anymore, I’ll keep going to classes through training.

Training also includes yoga (jumping on an unlimited 30-day trial at a nearby studio) and I’ll be incorporating other cross training. There’s a pool at Carnegie Mellon that I have access to (I just need to figure out how to get in!) and I also play volleyball with the MBA students 1 night a week so plenty of opportunity to keep active on non-running days.

Rather than do weekly training recaps (because ain’t nobody got time for that…or, at least this gal ain’t got time for that), I’m planning to share a monthly training recap. Here’s how it maps out now:

And at the end of the month, I hope all those boxes are green!