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| Stolen from http://www.dreamstime.com/ |
I have so many race recaps to do but I don't feel like doing them right now and so I defer to the table on the left side of this page for race results. I also put up the planned schedule for next year and there are a few gaps that will be filled in as they are decided on.
Here is a quick recap of 2015:
- Miles run in total: 562 (more or less)
- Miles run in races: 96.1
- Time spent running: 5148 minutes (that's a 9.2 minutes per mile run on average)
- Lifetime PRs: none
- Best paces during the year:
- 1M - 6:00
- 5k - 6:52
- 10k - 6.58
- 15k - 7:48
- 10M - 7:16
- Half - 8:00
- Awards won: none
- Pairs of shoes used and abused: 2
To illustrate how I spent the year here is a break-down of the mileage per month according to Endomondo and my now go-to activity tracker Garmin Connect:
The beginning of the year was spent on doctors, physical therapy, and races, that I idiotically ran. I also came to realize that my quads problem was probably misdiagnosed and I most likely suffered from a stress fracture in my left femur. At least that's what my googling came up with when I researched the pain that I had when I let my leg dangle over the edge of a seat. The dip in my November mileage was caused by the reoccurring of some similar, but not as intense, quads pain. It's all good right now. Oh, and I definitely will look for a different doctor. I will also put my knee injections on hold until I get a second opinion. They are just too expensive to be done "just because."
What's going on at the moment? Well, I am currently not really training for anything and follow an unscientific and entirely made up by myself weekly routine until later this year when I start a marathon training program where I will listen to a coach and hopefully not get injured again. This is what I am doing right now:
- Monday: rest or cross-training
- Tuesday: 4.5M easy
- Wednesday: 7M with 2x1 miles fast and the rest easy
- Thursday: rest or cross-training
- Friday: 7-9M easy
- Saturday: 4.5M easy
- Sunday: 10M easy
Every four weeks (around the Tuesday of the third week of the month) I want to increase my mileage by 10%, i.e. maybe upping the Tuesday and Saturday runs to 6 miles in January and then increasing the Wednesday and Friday runs by 1.5-2 miles each in February. By the time I join a coached program I want to be at around 45-50 miles per week with two days of speed training. After a race on the weekend I would take the next two days as rest days and skip all speed runs for the rest of the week. Again, this is entirely unscientific and just for fun and I hope I am unable to overdo this. I would also cut a longer run short if I feel that I am doing too much, i.e. things are hurting more or remind of injuries I had in the past. The biggest challenge is finding interesting routes for the Sunday long run. I can do two laps around Roosevelt Island for 7-8 miles just fine but anything beyond that gets way too boring. My usual Triborough Bridge (oops, sorry, RFK bridge), Randall's Island, Upper East Side, Queensboro Bridge (no, while I can get my mind around RFK bridge I just cannot do "Ed Koch Bridge"), and back to Roosevelt Island route is becoming a bit boring. Also running down to the Staten Island Ferry terminal lost its novelty effect. Maybe I should look into new routes out into Brooklyn or Queens. Stay tuned.
The next race I am signed up for, as you can see in the table on the side, is the NYRR Joe Kleinerman 10K in Central Park. It'll be the entire loop including the Harlem Hill and all the other ups and downs that make running so much fun!
Keep on running hard and smart!
