So I had a few goals set for 2013. Not resolutions but still things I wanted to accomplish. A big one was 1500 miles in the year. A fairly aggressive goal for me given that 2011, which was my best year of running in my 5 years on the road, was nowhere near that. I thought it was around 500 but I suspect it was closer to 400 as I look back at old data. That’s about 33 miles each month. I suppose not horrible if I’d been doing that consistently each month but really a huge chunk of that mileage came in April – June (176 miles). A 3 month stretch. If I’d run like that all year I’d have done at least 700 miles which I would have been really happy with!
So, with that said, what is my pace so far this year? Its a little hard to say. January had my marathon which you’d think would have helped but actually the opposite! I had to both taper & recover from the race which means my mileage was down in January (About 57 miles). February is looking much better and I expect to hit around 85 miles. If it was a normal length month, I might have been able to hit 90 – 95 miles.
To hit 1500 miles I would have to run 135 miles or so the last 10 months of the year. Doable? Possibly. Am I likely to hit that? No, almost definitely not. I could see by the fall I could be doing that consistently but I hit 129 in December and that was pretty hard on me. I was pretty much sore every day. I need to ramp back up to that mileage much more gradually as I’m lucky I suffered no injuries in December.
Now that I’ve added in triathlon training that will make it even harder though running does remain my focus. Biking and swimming will compete for some time though I mostly fit those activities into time I wasn’t running already.
So what should I do? Based on my current mileage and the fact that I don’t see any real reason it would go down (Disney was pretty rough on me…the taper was great recovery from the training too) I think a realistic goal is 1000 miles. That will still be tough since its way more than I’ve ever run but I think I can hit it.
I also may do a triathlon much sooner than I originally planned and may go full Olympic distance rather than Sprint. I’m feeling pretty good about my training so far!