Running: The 1200 Mile Goal

So in addition to the races (including my big goal for the year to run a marathon), I also set a goal to run 1200 miles in my 26th year (or I guess my 27th year? whatever, the whole year that I am 26!). This seemed like a tough but reasonable goal at the time - essentially 100 miles/month. I had planned out my training plans from my birthday (June 15th) through the marathon (Feb 17th) and then I would just continue running ~4 times per week until June.

In reality, I had some issues with my knee and several other things here and there, so by the time I finished the marathon, I was 70 miles behind on my plan! That meant there were a lot of miles to go in March, April, May and the first half of June.

The chart below shows my monthly mileage - you can see I really picked it up in December with marathon training, but January was a little lower after my knee issues, and February a was a little lower since I rested a bit after the marathon.

So March and April mileage were basically like marathon training, and my plan for May is pretty similar! And then you can see the plan for June is to just as many miles in half a month as I did in a full month in July-November. So obviously I did not do a great job of pacing myself through the year!!

Overall through, I think it has been really good to have this goal to keep me motivated without a big upcoming race. I've been running 5 miles on the weekdays (3 days/week) and I have consistently been running around 15 miles as a long run on the weekends - that's more than a half marathon! I am going to cut that back to 10-12 miles as it gets hotter outside, but I'm hoping to keep myself consistently in half marathon shape. In my experience it is always so hard to build the mileage back up, so I don't want to cut back too far and then have to start all over again.

And there is definitely something empowering about going out to run 15 miles for no real reason! I think I will probably keep the 1200 mile goal again for next year. My body has been feeling good lately, so I don't feel like I'm overdoing it. I definitely need some new shoes soon though since I've been packing on the miles!

It will be a challenge to keep up the mileage for May and June since I have quite a few weekend trips coming up, but I am so close to finishing now that (barring an injury) I don't think I'll let anything keep my from reaching the goal! It will definitely be satisfying to accomplish a plan that has been a year in the making :)

And speaking of, now I'm off to get in 5 miles today, hopefully before the rain hits!