I’m currently training for my 6th half-marathon, the San Francisco Second Half, in July. I usually only do them every couple of years, to make sure I still can, but I’d been wanting to do this race for a while and it always sells out. This year, a co-worker happened to alert me that sign-ups had just opened, so I went ahead and reserved my place. Since I just did the Golden Gate Half (for the third time) last November, I figured I’d just keep up my level of training rather than going back to “normal” and training up again.

Usually when I’m training for a race from scratch, I use the Hal Higdon “Intermediate 1” program. It’s doable with a job, except when you get to about week 7 and you’re doing 7-8 mile runs on a Wednesday. I work out in the morning, so that means getting up at something like 4:30am to do a long run, which isn’t great. This time, I’m just maintaining my regular running schedule, which is generally 4-5 mile runs on Sunday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and then a 10-12 mile run on Friday (or over the weekend if I can’t get to it on Friday). On the other days, I do yoga or strength training.

I’m trying a new approach this time, which is focused on increasing muscle. I’m doing heavy lifting (heavy for me!) inspired by the “Hit Play Not Pause” podcast, which is geared towards athletic women in perimenopause or menopause. The host talks quite a bit about how women tend to start to lose muscle at our age, and we have to really work to retain it. I bought Bowflex adjustable dumbbells last year (which are fantastic!) and am trying to steadily increase the weights I’m using (I track it via the free Strong app).

I’ve also significantly increased my protein intake, aiming for 1.6g per kg of body weight, which is about 120g/day for me. I eat Greek yogurt every day, nuts, and hardboiled eggs, but I also try to get 3 scoops of protein powder over the course of the day. I was getting whey-based powders because I thought that was all there was, but there is a vegan powder from Naked that I’ve been trying, which is pretty good. I get around 50-60g from stuff I normally eat and then ~70g from protein powder.

I started this approach around the beginning of this year, and my scale (who knows how accurate it is) thinks I’ve gone from 58.2% muscle to 62.8%, so I feel pretty good about that! We’ll see if it impacts my race time.