December Mileage

December training ended on a high note as I mentioned in 2 tweets a few days ago:

December was my biggest month in over 2 years, with 105.47 miles. My last month that had more miles was Aug of 2013 (with 114 miles - my biggest month ever I think), and that contributed to my sacrum injury the next month.

In mid-December, I showed my last 7 weeks of training in this post which showed a nearly perfect mileage increase. Well, the last 2.5 week of December were also nearly perfect, ending on the 31st with a short race:

Weekly milage of 24.5 and 26.3 miles.

I now need to break from this plan of "3 easy runs / week building each week by 5 minutes" because now I'll start running TOO MUCH and get myself injured. If I kept up this pace/plan for all of January (even keeping in mind that I'll have a short 1-mile race near the middle of the month), I'd end up with around 120+ miles, which would be my biggest month EVER. So it's time for some shorter and harder efforts.

(Not to mention that it will be harder for me to get in 3 "long" runs each week anymore. I started running a lot with Charlie while Henry was at pre-school [9 out of 17 runs in Nov through mid-Dec], but now I'm running so far that it will be harder to do with my little guy. Him and I might go on a few shorter/harder runs, but we won't have time for long runs together. I might have to do more of my workouts at 5 a.m. to get them in.)

I've been doing a LITTLE effort here-and-there in the past few weeks. Dec 19 was an easy/moderate run at 7:09 pace. Dec 23 was some fartleks (mixing up running hard and easy for a total of 15 minutes of hard running). Dec 27 was my longest run in the last few months with 3 middle miles being at "race pace" (easier than tempo pace): 6:38, 6:29, 6:16 = 19:23 (6:27.7 pace).

Time to mix up the training while still increasing my long run. I officially signed up for the "Securian Run Half Marathon" before the new year price increase. So I have 4 weeks to build my distance - my monthly mileage is pretty great (for me), but my long run is just over 9 miles right now.

Back with a DONUT MILE Race Report on Monday! Happy weekend!