Headed for the (training) finish line

Today is a glorious day off of half marathon training. I have been using the Hal Higdon intermediate half marathon training program, which calls for today being a day of rest. I picked this program up from week 8 after my last half marathon, for which I used Higdon's novice half marathon training program to train, because of the amount of time between my first and second halfs. The truth is, for me at least, the novice program was too easy. I'm not a novice and feel much better using the more advanced program. Unfortunately, I didn't really believe I was more of an intermediate runner than a novice one until I was 11 miles into my first half marathon.

Anyway, I am coming up on the weekend before my next half marathon. My last long run before the race is Sunday. It is going to be 12 miles and comes at the end of my toughest week of training yet. I did 10X400 meter intervals the other day at 5K race pace (for me that's at about 7:30 min/mile) on Wednesday, which felt good but wore me out. I'm getting a little old to run 400 meter "sprints" the day after running 5 miles and the day before running 3 and lifting weights.

To assist with my recovering from my last hard week of training (the week of the half marathon is pretty tame training-wise) and to be as prepared as possible for the rigors of running 13.1 miles -- in other words, to not suffer cramping over the last couple miles -- I'm focusing on my diet. I see lots of bananas, a fair amount of complex carbohydrates, fruits, vegetables, etc. I'm going to lay off anything fried, too much red meat, snacks, etc. I'm pretty fortunate in that I think I generally eat pretty well these days, and when I don't eat well running 30 miles a week compensates for it, but I have to make an extra effort to shift my calories from proteins to carbs this coming week.

Maybe I'm worrying too much about running "just" a half marathon, but this is the race where I want to make my goal (1:50:00), so I might as well do what I can to put myself in the best position to do it.

Which, of course, may include a beer the day before the race. Yay beer carbs!