December, done!

Well, I think tomorrow will be a rest day, so I'm now all done with 2014 running!  

At the beginning of this year, I would not have predicted I would have had such a great year of growth.  I made plans, I stuck to plans, I achieved more than I hoped I would. Before I get to 2014 stuff, here is the quick recap of December. 

Goals for the month included a) resume/maintain base mileage of around 40 miles per week b) more hills c) more speed.  I think I've done a great job on 2 of the 3 (weekly base and hills) and a decent job with speed work, thanks to starting up indoor track work at the Reggie Lewis track.

My focus has been more on weekly elevation totals, thanks to two new regular runs.  The first is a weekly session of hill repeats near my house.  Second, I've been out in the blue hills every weekend this month for either trail running, or using that area as a long destination run.

Here are the weekly elevation results from Strava showing the effort of the last 4 weeks.


I really love the long run out through Milton, which you can see below.








The first 5 miles are a slow and steady climb (plenty of rolling hills on the way) up to the State Police Barrack trail head, which follows a steep hill with a mile and half of trail running before I hit the summit road for the actual Blue Hill.  From there, it's about a 8/10 of a mile on a sharp incline, reaching the summit at 620 feet.  The rest of the run is straight downhill and then I do my best to maintain a pace close to 7:30 for the final (very flat) 5 miles of the run.  My plan would be to treat this run like Steve Way's Purbeck run, and create extensions (or double summit road climbs) on the flats where I'll do either a steady run or maybe some interval work.   Conditions permitting, I also hope to head out to the Blue Hills once every 2 or 3 weeks for training that consists solely of trail running.

December Miles: 170
Elevation: 7,200 ft (Note: Strava says 6,800, but they always screw me, especially on my PJP tempo run)

Rest Days: 7
Pace: 8:08

The 170 miles was as planned, and up considerably from the 120 mile average that I put in between Boston and the Philly training. 

When looking at the trailing 12 months, I'm up to 1,841 miles.  So now I'm starting to comp months that where fairly high mileage, so the month-over-month increases are back down under 10% for the last two months.

So, thanks to healthy legs and fantastic weather, I've been able to still get out and put my work in.  Here are some of my favorite runs from the month:

• (FHR) Ponkapaug to Blue Hill summit
• (FHR) Progression w/ 3 miles at 7:30 pace, 3 miles at 7 min pace, 3 miles at 6:30 pace. 
• Solo 2x3 miles tempo run in PJP
• Solo Xmas day run including my now regular 8xEllison hill reps
• Solo Blue Hill destination long run

And that doesn't even include any of the track workouts (indoor track workouts don't really register with a GPS watch though.)

So, I'm excited and pleased that everything went nearly exactly as I drew it up coming out of the Philly marathon.  My only regret is that a) I did not keep up with my core this month and b) my eating discipline over the last few weeks has been terrible.  The first few weeks of the month I was holding my weight down under 174, but the last two weeks it has been back up to 179...and this week in Wisconsin is doing me no favors!

January will be a get-back-to-real-work month for me, especially considering the 2015 goals I have outlined for myself...

3 Weeks to Philly (Nov 3-Nov 9)

Planned miles: 40

Actual miles: 49
Planned long run: 16
Actual long run: 16
Accumulated pace for the week: 7:54

Links to key runs:10 x 800; Friday Quick Run; Long Run including Blue Hill

Three weeks out for me is a step-down week going into the final two week taper.  I still wanted to accumulate a decent mile total; something consistent with where I've been over the last four weeks, which is close to 50 miles on average. 

The plan within the plan for this week was to try and get my average pace back down below 8 min miles for the week, and to find some hills to run.  Here's a nice graph set from Strava of my elevation totals for the last few months, and while I like the progressions followed by resets, those are really not great totals.  Maybe too much running on the perfectly flat Charles River and on the Neponset River Trails...it's hard not to in those spots though, they're so scenic!



So, instead of running to PJP park in the evenings, I ran the Milton loop.  And instead of hitting the Charles at lunch, I opted to run up to BC, which ended up being a pleasantly fast run.  I'm actually not that surprised with the pace of Friday's lunch run, since I had the company of a strong runner in RTB teammate Dan.

I've already written a bit about the Yasso 800's on Wednesday, which I was really happy with, especially because 3-4 months ago, that workout would have left me depleted and hobbled for 3-4 days, but  this week I was humming in under 48 hours.

The only thing left of note would be the 16 mile long run I did this AM.  I decided to run out Randolf Ave all the way to the Blue Hill Forrest which meant 8 miles of rolling hills to start the run, and then I would climb up to the top of the Blue Hill ski-hill/observatory.  Its a steep climb: ~400 feet in roughly 6 tenths of a mile, and it was really tough, but I did a decent job of holding my pace.  That climb ended up triggering my max heart rate (173) of the run though, which is what I had in mind.


My thought was, if I can trigger the max heart rate at the mid-point in the run, and wear out my muscles in the process, then when I hit the flat last 6 miles of the 16 mile run, my body may be experiencing the relative discomfort of mile 20+ that I'll feel during the final 6 miles of the marathon.  And I was there...I was forced to pull-up to wait for traffic at around mile 12 and getting back moving was not an easy task!

The goal for this long run was to keep it under 8 min miles for the run, and to hopefully hit my marathon pace on the flat final 6.


So, that comes in at a 7:42 average.  Solid for me, but not the 7:37 I'll be shooting for at Philly.

Now the taper begins.  I'll cut back on total miles but try to accelerate to marathon pace in those runs as quickly as possible.  I would give my overall health a 7 right now (with totally injured/fatigued being a 1) so the idea now is just to get myself back up to a 10 over the next 10-14 days, but not in cold-turkey fashion.

Miles run in the past 365 days: 1,748
Miles run in 2014: 1,569
Philly plan through 14 weeks: 608 miles run vs planned 533.
Philly plan vs Boston plan through 14 weeks: 608 miles vs 513.

I'm currently projecting to finish at 675 miles, and I likely will not try and surpass my goals for the next two weeks during the tape.  I will say that when I first worked out a training plan for Philly, it totaled 665 miles, but I figured that kind of an increase over Boston's 589 was too aggressive.  Thankfully I've been healthy and the original plan wasn't too far off the mark!