05.12
Last week I ran the Quebec City International Half-Marathon. That was my first half-marathon ever and I managed to run it in 1:35:13 at a 4:31 minutes per kilometres pace. The race was a blast. I’m very proud of my result considering this was my first race ever. I didn’t want to start too fast so I began the race slowly at a 5:00 pace and then gradually accelerated until the end of the race. I ran the first half in 50:08 minutes and the second in 45:05 so I guess I managed my race nicely! The last 5 kilometers were awesome, because I was always accelerating throughout the race I was always passing other runners. But around the 17th kilometers I passed a guy who simply did not want to get passed. We began a little chase game and passing each other constantly until the very end where we were literally sprinting for the last hundred meters. We finished with a difference of 4 milliseconds between our finish times.
This first half-marathon was the first step of a bigger plan. August 30 I will run the Quebec City Marathon and this week is the first week of my 16 weeks training plan leading me to the race. It’s clear my ultimate goal is to qualify for Boston (which means running the marathon under 3:10:00). I made my training quite hard (peaking at 105 kilometers a week), but I take this thing seriously. I’m clearly addicted to running and I make my life evolve around it. I’m careful with my nutrition, I cross train and obviously I train 6 days a week.
The increasing popularity of running these days is surprising. The Quebec City International Half-Marathon had 38% more registration this year. And it’s my understanding that it is the case for several race across the world. It’s nice to see so many people running and taking their health seriously.
Congratulations. I followed the link to your training plan and I was astonished when I read it. It’s sick, but probably necessary for marathon runners I guess. I wonder how you manage to spend so much time running almost every day, how do you get so much time for leisure?
I usually don’t run more than two kilometers every Saturday morning, because running gets boring so quickly. Even when I tried running four kilometers three days in a week for two weeks in the past I didn’t sense any improvement in my endurance, so I don’t do it as often any more. I have the greatest respect for marathon runners who can pull off what I see as the impossible.
Thanks!
Plus I’m a student and I don’t have a full time job. I must say it helps a lot when it comes to find time 
First of all, I’ve been running seriously for a year now so I already have a lot of mileage in my legs
I know it seems a lot but really I never run more than an hour or an hour and a half per day. (except on Sunday). So once you get use to it, it’s not that hard to manage. Instead of watching TV I just go out for a run
You may find this article interesting: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1170253/The-painful-truth-trainers-Are-expensive-running-shoes-waste-money.html it talks about the un-usefullness of fancy running shoes.
Very interesting.
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