TRYING SOMETHING NEW

For the next two months, I'll be "running" 6 days a week to prepare for the half-marathon I plan to run on August 31. I say "running", emphasis on the "", because I'm trying something new- I'll be doing 4 out of 6 runs, including my long training run on Saturdays, on an elliptical machine. Weird, I know, and the running purists will scoff, but hear me out.

This advice came from my uncle, who has run more races than I can remember, and he told me he does almost all of his running on an elliptical. Me being at about 312 lbs right now, I thought it might be good to take on this training plan, so as to preserve what's left of my joints after my first half-marathon, which I ran a while back at 325 lbs.

For the curious, it basically looks like this-
MONDAY- Run (3 miles on 38 minutes or less)
TUESDAY- Elliptical (40 minutes, comfortable pace)
WEDNESDAY- Run (3 miles in 38 minutes or less)
THURSDAY- Elliptical (40 min, comfortable pace)
FRIDAY- Elliptical (3 miles in 38 minures or less)
SATURDAY- Elliptical (5.5 miles in 65 minutes or less)
SUNDAY - OFF

Every week, I try to get my time down while building my mileage up, but even on my long runs, I never spend more than 80 minutes on the elliptical, and by then I'm going 7 miles. We'll see how this works- so far I feel great, but I haven't had any long runs yet, so I don't know how it will feel once I'm pushing out 13.1. The theory is that by pushing my RPMs higher and higher, getting my time faster and faster, I will create endurance without logging in half-marathon mileage every week. My knees and feet like this idea. Updates to come.