Running Towards Boston

Training for Boston and Other Goals

It’s hard to believe that February is finally over. It may be the shortest month on the calendar, but it is also the coldest and usually the snowiest.

I’m counting down the days of March all ready and waiting for Spring!

I’m also counting down the days to The Boston Marathon on April 15th. We are basically down to six weeks to Boston.

My training has been going well. I’m not putting in crazy miles, but I am being more diligent with my running.

I run every Sunday morning and Tuesday night. Several times I’ve run twice on Tuesdays. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I’m also running more from my house.

Last week I ran in an area of my town that I’ve only driven by before. It was cool to see the parks, a church and many old homes I’ve never taken much note of before. I even discovered a street with original brick paving!

Over the holiday months of November and December I managed to keep my base miles above 60 miles per month. That’s a rather pathetic 15+ miles per week! I ran 18 miles last Sunday.

But having that base to build on allowed me to bump my miles more than 30% in January and another 22% above January in February.

I should be able to get more than 100 miles in March. Then two weeks of taper time insanity!

The 2019 Grand Goal

Besides the joy of running races at will, feeling good and remaining injury free, I have a grand goal for 2019.

It’s a simple yet challenging goal that I’ve mentioned before.

My 2019 Grand Goal is to average 3 running miles per day all year. If I do that I’ll get to 1,095 miles for 2019.

Mathematically it’s a simple goal. 3 is an easy number to remember.

Falling Behind and coming Back

January is a long month and not just because it’s the dead of winter! I only managed to run 79.99 miles and that comes out to only 2.58 miles per day.

Most people give up on their New Year’s Resolutions by the second week of January. I managed to stick to my pursuit throughout the month, but I came up short.

Increasing my miles by 30% is pretty good, but not good enough.

February is a short month but it still has four Sundays. I managed to run three of the Sunday Long Runs. I missed one Sunday for the Super Sunday 5 Miler. I’ll count that as a speed work out. It was.

Then I spent a week in Orlando for the HIMSS19 conference. I managed a 16.2 mile Sunday Long Run on February 10th and hopped on a plane to Florida.

During the conference I managed one four-mile treadmill run one evening. It wasn’t much but I felt great afterwards. It’s so hard to get in any exercise while travelling for work.

Throughout February I was behind my 3 mile per day goal. Each Sunday Long run got me closer, but I was still behind.

Tuesday night I ran 6.25 miles and was within 3 miles of my goal. I didn’t get in a run on Wednesday but I did manage to run 3.44 miles on the treadmill today, February 28th.

That brought my miles for the year to 177.73. Adding January (31 Days) and February (28 Days) my denominator was 59. 177.73/59 = 3.0123 miles per day!

I’m just so slightly ahead of the curve! 0.73 miles to be exact.

March has 31 brightening days so I need to run at least 93 miles to stay on target.

With any luck I’ll get on the treadmill March 1st and bang out four or five miles to get March off to a good start.

How are your 2019 goals going? Are you training for a major spring race?

Run Well my Friends and don’t give up!

Andy