A Weekly/Monthly Update…

Hey guys, hope everyone’s doing great. It’s been about 10 days since I posted, so I figured it was time to catch everyone up on life in general.

A big topic of conversation this month has been “monthly miles.” When you spend enough time around the people I run with, you basically have no choice but to set some sort of crazy goal for yourself on a regular basis. We’ve all had some pretty outstanding streaks going on this month, which is a great way to kick off 2015.

For starters, I’ve run 30 of the 31 days in January. My only day off was January 2, and to be honest I feel great. 29 days of straight running and I still feel like I could keep going. I’ll lay down one more run tomorrow and then Monday — OFF DAY. Here are the stats.

All in all, I’m really happy with the month and the progress that I feel like I’ve made with my new coach. I am really loving his methods and am more excited than I’ve ever been about my running. Here’s a recap of this week:

Monday: RX was a 7-mile recovery, and I ended up doing 7.5 in 64:03. I also completed W/O #1 on my Strength & Conditioning sheet. It took about 40 minutes and I was home early.

Tuesday: WOOF, Tuesday. I had been thinking about Tuesday since the PREVIOUS Tuesday when I did 5min. hard/1 min. recovery (I think this was actually the last time I blogged). My RX for this week was 6 min. hard/1 min. recovery — at a 6:10-6:20mm pace. This boils down to basically, mile repeats for 6 miles. Except you’re supposed to have a lot more of a break in between mile repeats, usually.

ANYWAYS — killed it. Six-minute splits were at the following paces: 6:18, 6:18, 6:18, 6:18, 6:15, 6:10, sandwiched in between 3 warm-up and 3 cool-down miles. 12-mile workout total and I felt higher than I have in a LONG time after that one. I talked to my coach and I know that ideally, my pace for mile repeats and such will need to drop below 6mm pace BUT — I am doing all of this on tired legs. Definitely not something to be overlooked.

Wednesday: 8-mile recovery run in 67:56 (8:29mm pace) — this is a little quicker than I’m supposed to go, but I was feeling good. I did a 40-minute lift as well.

Thursday: Tempo workout sandwiched again, between 3 w/u and 3 c/d miles. The tempo pace was 6:45-7:15, and I actively tried to stay at the fast end of that. My 4 fast miles were 6:53, 6:53, 6:48, 6:42, and I was able to talk comfortably the whole time. Feeling aerobic at a sub-7 pace is exciting for me, and I can’t wait to keep strengthening my lungs.

Friday: 7-mile recovery in 61:01, 8:43mm pace.

Saturday: 18 miles long run in 2:27:07, about an 8:10mm pace. This has been my long run trend all month, and I’m fine with that for now. I have to keep slowing myself down on these runs, which is better than the alternative I suppose!

Shew, well — that’s it friends! What a month, right? Before I let ya go, I have to congratulate some others on their accomplishments for the month:

Jeremiah finished January with 365 miles (yeah, seriously, 365…) INSANE right?! We are all super impressed and proud of him. He has also not had a rest day since Jan. 2.

Lorie and Mary Ellen both ran 200 miles this month, which they capped off this morning with a 13 mile run outside. This actually made 200 miles for Lorie, and 63 miles in the last 6 days. So, congrats to both of them.

I am not sure if everyone else’s stats for the month, but I know that there were lots of accomplishments out there so, well done for January!

I’ve got a 10-miler on deck for Superbowl Sunday, and I kind of promised Lorie I would try out her Body Pump class afterward…… YIKES. Guess I’d better fuel up huh?

Have a good one, y’all.