Committed: St Jude Half

Today is a big day.  I've been counting down to this day for a couple of weeks now.  So much anxiety has already built up in my mind about it that I wondered if I was going to actually do it.  But today, May 1st, the registration for the St. Jude Memphis Marathon Weekend opened and first thing this morning I logged on and registered for the Half Marathon.  There is no turning back now.  I mean, I guess there technically is since the race allows for registration transfers but that's not the point.  I've paid my money and I'm committed to doing it.

I cannot tell you how completely intimidated I am by the very thought of doing this race.  13.1 miles!  That means that if I run my hardest for the ENTIRE time the best I can hope for is a time of 2 hours and 37 minutes.  That sounds like an eternity considered my farthest distance to date was a little over 4 miles almost a year ago, and it took me about 50 minutes.  I was pretty sure I had been running for forever when I was coming up on that finish line.

I know that when I started this process my thought was I'm going to run the Disney Princess Half so you might be confused why I signed up for this one.  Well, the more I thought about the Disney race the more I realized that I wanted to go down there and have a good time, not run and get a good time.  The Disney race looks so unique with all the various characters and places I'll want to stop and snap a picture and I didn't want to miss out on doing those things because of the stress of falling behind the balloon walkers. So I decided to sign up and train for this St. Jude half and try my hand at getting placed into a better corral.  So that's why I'm doing this.  Now this also changes my training plans in that I need to figure out my training plans!  I was planning on following Disney's Jeff Galloway plan: found here and just modifying it to fit the calendar for this year.  So now I think I may back it up and train with that but adjust the dates so that it gets me ready for the St. Jude Half.  But then my runner friend Travis and a mommy blogger I follow Mama Laughlin both recommend using Hal Higdon.

So, have you ever trained for a Half Marathon before?  What program do you recommend?