December in Review + Week 1 of Spring Race Training

December

Total Miles: 18 down from 43.3 last month. Embraced the off season over here!

Total Time: 3:12:43 down from 7:56:41 last month.  

Total Runs: 5 runs, 6 weight training session.

Highest weekly mileage:  7.8 miles lolz

Favorite run: I did a 3.5 mile tempo at faster paces than I have hit in a REALLY long time.

Most hardcore run: 4.15 hilly fartlek run through the snow in shorts. #yayzies

Favorite race: NA
Bike Miles: 0
Favorite Jam:  One Direction--Story of My Life. I blame SNL for making me love this song.

December 30th marked the first week in my half marathon training for this spring. Round one will be a 12 week cycle leading up to the half in NYC while visiting Susan! Since I took December as an "off-season" with minimal running, I'm starting my weekly mileage at 20 and working up from there. I'm hoping to hit high 30s, low 40s by the time the race rolls around. After that race, I have another half five weeks later, and then one the following week. I'm unsure if I'll race-race both of the latter races, but at least by the time the first one rolls around, I'll be able to see the weather report for the following weekend to determine which makes more sense as a "goal" race. 

Since I took the last couple of months easy running wise, I'm REALLY excited to get back in to a schedule, which was my hopes in implementing an off season. Although our weather needs to get its act together. We've had more -30 degree windchill days than I'm ok with, and our winter barely started. I can't wrap my mind around long runs on the treadmill anymore... gone are the days where I can gut out 16 miles on the treadmill to avoid 3 feet of snow. Coincidentally, the training cycle I did that I PR'd almost every race I did... perhaps not coincidentally, huh? I got in 2 of my 4 runs last week, all treadmill bound. I'm an idiot to try to squish them all in to 4 days, since I'm actually doing speedwork again, YAYZIES! And my body requires more recovery than that. Oops. Luckily the temps look favorable for this weekend, so as long as I don't have to do my LR on the treadmill, I think I can hack the rest of the runs indoors this week!