Hardcore February

To be honest, I don't feel like February has been all that hardcore. Although I met some of my goals for February, a few others have gotten away from me, and those are the ones that are making me feel not so great right now.

The Good:

• I beat my January mileage, which was an explicitly stated goal. Just barely (133.2 miles vs 131.5), but I did it, and I don't think I would have if I hadn't explicitly written last month that it was a goal.
• I ran a strong 10K on 2/18 -- the first time I've raced since CIM & my first 10K since last August, for only 7 seconds off my PR & 3rd AG / 4th overall.
• I (mostly) kept my strength training up.

The Less-Than-Good:

• I had one ugly week where I knew I would be working all weekend & could not motivate myself to get more running done during the week in anticipation of that.
• Some foot/knee pain that has caused me to miss/shorten a few runs. (It's been causing karate problems as well.) This was also exacerbated in the last few days by ski boots.
• An embarrassing dearth of long runs. Part of the problem with this is that I usually plan them on Sundays & this has been a bad month for that. I know I can always plan ahead & do them earlier in the week; I've just been bad about planning ahead. So no long run on the 12th (working all weekend), the 19th (post-race day), or the 26th (in Tahoe, though I actually did attempt this one -- it was the foot pain that brought me up short at 7 miles instead of 13). Actually, I feel less bad about this one because I DID attempt to do my 13 miler the Friday before we left for Tahoe, but that was the day I felt just physically terrible and knew after 4 miles that it was NOT going to happen.

Yes, the foot pain is out of my control for the most part, but losing mileage due to something I CAN'T control kind of makes me feel worse about the days when I just failed to plan ahead / not be a lazy sloth. I know, inevitably, that my mileage for a given month will always be lower than what I've planned for some reason or another. It doesn't need any help from me not giving my best effort.

One of my big goals for 2012 was to run 2000 miles, which means averaging ~38 miles per week or ~167 per month. Of course I knew I wasn't going to start off the year hitting those numbers right away, but I'd sort of hoped that by mid-February I'd be back to a consistent 40 / week. No such luck. And 133.2 is a solid week's worth of mileage away from 167. That means that from now on, if I'm going to get to 2000, my monthly average needs to be ~174ish.

(If it sounds like I love numbers and concrete plans, it is because I surely do. Mathematician, you know.)

Speaking of numbers and such, I'm loving RunningAhead for tracking miles online, for a whole host of reasons.

A summary graph thingy color-coded by type of run:

(Again -- note the humiliating lack of tall blue bars.)

An easy-to-read summary calendar thing that makes it easy to view or edit any workout in one click:

Additional data fields for each run that I can use if I want to, but that aren't required for every entry:

Fields for entering intervals (even multiple types of intervals for the same workout), and options to auto-sum & average according to distance, time, pace etc.

The ability to create custom workout types (specifically karate & strength training) & edit the data entry fields however I want:

(Also the obligatory blog widget over there on the sidebar somewhere.)

In addition to all that, it's free, super easy to set up & use, has an intuitive user interface, & I have yet to have a single issue with any part of it. L-O-V-E. If it hasn't been as hardcore a month as I would've liked mileage-wise, at least I can have pretty color-coded graphs & data fields to look at, and that is something.

Goals for March:

• 174 miles (!)
• Three runs of 12+ miles
• PR at Oakland Half Marathon (Yes, 1:39:xx is my ultimate HM goal for the year, but if I'm really honest with myself I don't think I'm going to be ready this month. But 1:44:xx seems doable.)
• ~3 strength sessions per week

Seems manageable right? ;)

Hope you had a fantastic February, and here's to a marvelous March! :D