It's On

I’m doing it! The Ottawa Half Marathon.

While at work yesterday, I was checking out some Hal Higdon plans and realized, hey he has a Novice II plan! I was a bit nervous about jumping into the half marathon because the Intermediate program was a bit too much for me (and my ankle), but the novice was just toooo novice. This one is perfect… the mileage for most of the week ranges between 3 and 5 miles per run, excluding the long run (which starts at 4 miles in the first week and goes up to 12 miles in the last week). It’s a 12-week program, but because the race is in May and I have a busted ankle, I’ve decided to turn it into a 22-week program. I’m repeating each week (Week 1-1, 1-2, 2-1, 2-2), so I can build up my mileage relatively slowly. I think the training only peaks at 25 mpw anyway so it’s not an intense program, but this scheduling seems to work perfectly. The scheduled “5K race day” actually falls on March 17 this year… St Patrick’s Day! There will definitely be a race that day! I’m excited.

I’m all paid up and Week 1-1 was officially this week! It’s going to be amazing. Very excited and plan to keep everyone posted on each day of training! Given the fact that my half race time in 2007 (on a very fresh tendon injury) was 3:30something, the fact that I plan to beat my old time by over an hour is awesome. I look forward to taking my training to the next level and look even more forward to documenting the results!

They’ve changed the course since the last time I ran it, so I’m interested to see how this goes. I’m slightly disappointed as the canal route was great. For those who don’t know Ottawa, the canal is absolutely gorgeous, and even more beautiful in May during the Tulip Festival. The new route takes us through hipster town (Westboro) and over to the dingy Quebec side. Running across the bridges might be kind of interesting, though. Not sure why they had to change the route… I do recall though that the last half course involved going up a set of stairs (from the road that runs along the canal up onto a bridge) and doing a loop through an NCC parking lot. Here’s the course map:

Anne