Saturday 31 January 2015

January - Month 3 - Work, Running and Mileage Near Miss

Another good month on the road to the Shakespeare Marathon and hopefully a 2015 PB filled year. January is always a tough running month for me, with lots of work pressures and hours in the office combined with short days and generally pretty uninviting weather. We were lucky with the weather this January in the main, but I did have a fun run in freshly fallen snow on Friday. I managed to get out running on 19 of the 31 days and for a combined mileage of 156. Made up of the following runs:

3 x parkruns (21:37, 20:35, 20:17)
4 x Long runs(12, 16, 16 and 17 miles)
1 x Hill session
4 x Commute
1 x Tempo
2 x Intervals
4 x Easy/General/Recovery runs

Got back into the Nellers training group and did the 10 x 400m session and the hills, but had to miss the 6 x 800m after finishing work too late. Enjoy the group environment and really pushed myself in both sessions. May have over done it a little in the hills session, because I then had to take a couple of days off to let my body heal up and all from 13 minutes of hard running!

The long runs were eventful at times, had to go exploring on one run as I run out of street lighting on my planned route and on another of my runs I just bonked completely and had no energy so had to make an unplanned Lucozade and Wine Gum stop in order to get myself home. Will look to stretch the long run out after my Half Marathon in February so I start to hit 20 miles and hopefully sort out the nutrition issues I've had.

Ran home from the office 5 times, 1 of which I pushed the pace and made it home in well under an hour so have shown that as tempo run. Also tried out a new longer route home and I can extend that out if needed and that made a nice change from my regular route.

With work being tough I opted for the train as my main form of transport to and from the office but did cycle to and from the office on two occasions for a combined 30 miles.

Aside from that it was just some steady runs. I did miss the odd run in the month which would have meant a record high mileage month but I fell 2 miles short of last months 158. Not too disappointed as I am sure the record will go soon and this January has seen me run more than 50 miles further than any of my previous 5 efforts. So January's running is in the bank and I hope that I will enjoy the benefits of it next week at the Great Bentley Half Marathon.