So, I'm starting a new weekly post for my blog that will be all about my training for the Great North Run that's in September. The plan is to tell you what runs I have done the previous week, how they went, whether I'm on schedule and share my plan for the following week.

I want to be able to document the process of training for a Half Marathon and sharing how I feel during. I figured it could be useful to some people!

So, before I start going into detail, I should probably say that it took me a while to find the training plan I wanted to do. After getting an injury(and STILL having said injury :/) I know that I did too much too soon with my last plan so I wasn't going to continue using it. It just had too many big long runs and it was too much too soon for me.

I'd gone from doing 3 runs per week averaging 1.5-3 miles to doing 5 mile runs at least twice a week with a long run at the weekend. So, I searched online for a beginner/novice plan to take this one slowly and not cause more injury. I came across Hal Higdon's Novice 2 Half Marathon Training Plan and it seems to be exactly what I'm looking for.

It's a pretty basic plan of 4 runs per week consisting of easy runs/race runs during the week and a long run at the weekend and the runs during the week aren't as high for milage.

So, now that I've explained the basics of my plan I can get into my training info!

Week 1 Training Schedule

Day Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday

Scheduled Swim 3 Miles 3 Miles Rest/CT 3 Miles Rest/CT 4 Miles

What I Did Nothing - Other than Walking Nothing - Other than Walking 2 Miles Rest/Walking 3 Miles 13 Mile Bike Ride 4 Miles / 13 Mile Bike Ride

I didn't have a training plan until Wednesday, so my runs weren't on Schedule. I've missed one run this week but it won't impact much. I did a 2 mile for my first run as it was my first run in about 6 weeks due to injury so I didn't want to rush it.

With regards to Injury, on my first run, my leg was feeling fine but after I'd got home and the few days after, it's back to being sore and tender on the inside of the calf. Pretty annoying but I can't afford to rest. We've spent too much on GNR for me to skip the race and rest so I'm running through it - I'll definitely still listen to my body though and if it's too sore.. I will cut down training slightly to accommodate but hopefully it should be OK.

Week 2 Training Schedule

So, these are the runs that I have for this week and I plan on doing all of them obviously! I just need to make sure that I warm up properly and cool down properly after a run. I also need to make time for some foam rolling as I'm hoping that will help too.

As for Cross Training, it will be walking as normal, biking and I'm going to try and get to the pool a bit more which should help too.

As I've mentioned, these will be a weekly thing from now on every Monday, so I'll update you next week with how my runs got on and what cross training I'm doing :)

Question: What was the last thing you had to train for?