Running According to Plan

Here's a quick look at my last 7 weeks of training:

3 runs/week except for the week of Nov 16, with the weekly milage on the right.

Oh, and my last 2 Saturday runs have had a LITTLE bit of effort to them! My Dec 5th run had the last 2 miles at 7:00 and sub-6:30 pace, and my Dec 12th run had the middle 3 miles descending: 6:31, 6:23, and 6:18. That's far from "tempo" pace, but it feels good to be running a bit "harder" here and there.

Just as I was starting to run again about 7 weeks ago, I noted that I had 5 goals for the next few weeks/months for running (seen in this post). Here they are in bold, along with my comments right now on how well I'm doing:

• Run easy, 3x/week, running the same distance all week while building by about 3-4 minutes each week. Well, I'm building 5 minutes each week, but otherwise this is good. Only missed that 1 run, and I kinda needed that day to rest.

• No running on the track at the Y. Every run has been outside.

• No weight lifting or swimming until the elbow heals up. Tried swimming, but still taking it easy now.

• Eat better. I've had a lot of junk in the last few weeks. Ehh, OK. I could ALWAYS be eating better.

• Hit the bike/trainer when possible: maybe 2x/week all winter? This is where I'm doing quite well. Looking at my training in those numbers, I hit the bike (outdoors [in green] or on the trainer [in purple]) 17 times in 7 weeks: 1 week had 1 ride (Thanksgiving week), 2 weeks had 2 rides, and 4 weeks had 3 rides! This is GREAT for me. I have no plans on slowing down here.

This week might be another week where I don't get in 3 runs, but that's OK - my heel has felt GREAT in the last few weeks but has been just a little sore in the last couple of days. A rest day this week would be fine. Things have been feeling good enough that I'm starting to think about winter/spring running races. Back with some thoughts on those shortly.