Doubling down for the race

Well as I get closer to my goal of completing the San Jose 1/2 marathon I have decided to double down to give myself the best possible chance.

The first thing I've decided to do is give up drinking until after the race which is on October 3rd. Now, I am definitely a fan of an occasional glass of wine, mug of beer or even mojito so this is a very serious step for me. The main reason I am doing this is to reduce the amount of "empty" calories I am taking in as I train. I have had a long time goal of losing weight and by stopping the extra intake I figure I can accelerate my weight loss. I also heard about a study that said for every pound you lose you take several seconds off of your running pace and I have also wanted to run faster mainly so that I can get these long training runs over faster.

I think it is working already as I have been consistently below 210lbs for the last few days, a level I haven;t been below in a long time.

The second thing I have done is continue to stretch my runs out and in fact I ran in the double digits (10 miles) for the first time ever today. It was a little painful but I think that was for a different set of factors. I went out strong but finished very poorly (it was 10 miles after all) and I think I have a slight cold.

Now this was a good milestone for me to achieve as the general rule of thumb for running long races is: if you can do 20 miles you can do a marathon (26 miles) and if you can run 10 miles you can run a 1/2 marathon so in theory I could make it today. This means I have 5 weeks to improve my running and reduce my weight. Fortunately I don't have any travel so I should be in good shape to hit the race perfectly in stride.