Training Update

Not that anyone cares, but the first quarter of 2009 is over, so I thought I would update everyone on the running. It was a rather disappointing first quarter, in many ways, as I fell woefully short of my "aspirational" goal of 30 miles a week. In fact, in the first thirteen weeks of 2009 I ran 30 miles in a "training week" (Monday-Sunday) exactly once, in week five (30.3 miles). I came close a few times, hitting 90 percent of the goal three times (28.6, 27.9, 27.1). I ran more than 30 miles in at least one other seven day period, but not an official training week (a longish run on a Tuesday added to the previous week's Wednesday through Sunday total, for example).

My median week for the quarter was 25 miles even. So I ran less than 25 miles/week a little less than half of the time.

Oh, I have excuses--a bad cold for a couple weeks, the Inauguration mess in week four was a big deterrent to running in DC (that was my worst week of the quarter, only 11.7 miles). There's the whole baby thing.

But the real problem is mathematical. The problem with 30 miles a week as a goal is that I never plan to run more than that many. So to average that, I have to run it every week. And I don't have the time to do that right now.

My new goal is to average 25 miles. I was able to hit that more than half the time (seven out of 13 weeks). If I can bring up the low mileage weeks, and hit 28 miles every third week or so--which I was able to do last quarter--I should be able to improve the numbers next quarter.

Of course, total mileage ("quantity") doesn't tell one anything about quality of training. For the mid-year report, maybe I'll work up some stats on pace.