Training Continues

The miles are down this year.  In fact, the miles are down this month as well.  I had that IT Band injury early this year which sidelined me for about 2 months of no running and then this summer, I ran about half as much as I did in the past fearing the IT issue would resurface.  The past 2 years at this point in time, I would be around 1500 miles but this year I am still under 1000 miles, closer to like 915.  I think I will make 1000 for the year still barring another injury but still way down.

I am OK with this.  I think if things go well next year, I will be back up in mileage, maybe not to the over 1600 miles I have been at the past 2 years, but back up.  I have noticed that I do not have the endurance in the later miles that I used to have.  I struggles a lot to break 4 hours by only 3 seconds with pretty good weather 2 weeks ago where in the past, I feel that would have been to the lover 3:50's with similar conditions and course.

I did go on a 15 mile run with Mike this past weekend.  We finally got some pretty cold weather here in Wisconsin so this was the first really cold run of the season.  We left when it was 23F out.  My running tights have worn a little so to avoid so chaffing, I chose to wear shorts.  The first couple miles were a bit cold but in the end, it was nice shorts weather.  We ran a conservative easy pace and caught up on things talking the entire way.  In the last mile, we wanted to drop the average pace to under 9:09 (4 hour marathon pace) so we picked it up and ran a sub 8:00 to finish at average 9:07.

We are both going to South Carolina in 2 weeks (along with our friend Paul) to run the Kiawah Island Marathon. The goal will be a sub 4 again.  Hopefully it will be cold that day, I like the cold for race day.  The course is super flat, maybe like 10 feet difference since it is run right along the ocean.

In other running related news, on Thanksgiving, my friend Chris asked me to be the Race Day Director for his race in Burlington, The Talmer Turkey Trot.  Things went well and my 10 year old daughter, Melissa, ran.  She will tell you she ran terrible, and I agree, she did for her ability, but then again, she hasn't run in over a month and a half since Cross Country season ended.  She ended up running the 4 mile race in 37:47, over 2 minutes slower than she ran last year.  But, she did end up taking 1st place in the 14 and under age group so she was at least happy with that.

So the training continues and the races are still there.  I am still having fun.

Keep on Running!!!