Ramping Up

I have been trying to ramp up my mileage over the last 6-8 weeks. It's kind of working. I have averaged running about five days a week and have just now crept into the 30s for three weeks now. But I am still struggling with the juggling of everything. But everything I have signed up for I have chosen to do so, so I really can't complain. It's about making things work and sometimes sacrificing things when they don't. I was at 28.5 miles for the week heading into Sunday. Should have been a slam dunk for my goal for the week of 37. I have been logging about 20 miles total on the weekends recently and already had 13 in the books from Saturday. Well, the run yesterday didn't happen at all. We had to leave the house by 9:30 and I had entertained the idea of getting out of bed at 6:oo to make it happen. I didn't get to bed until 3, so that would have been a 3 hours of sleep for the night, so I opted for the 4th hour of sleep. We didn't get home until 8 PM, so I bagged it. 28.5 for the week. Oh well. I am not specifically training for anything. Just have the lingering thought of not hitting my goal for the week...and hoping I can figure this out by the time June rolls around. I guess if three and four hour nights are in the future on my weekends, so be it. I think that may have to part of the sacrifice. Time will tell.

The Shamrock Shuffle is this Sunday, so I may try to front load the week, have an easy Saturday and then run my ass off with 25,000 of my closest friends on Sunday morning. I have no expectations for the race. I have never run an 8K before, so I am guaranteed a personal record. I am looking forward to seeing both Walter and Rich, a couple of my friends who are running the shuffle. I may try to bring the backup digital camera (the one that Tiffany dunked into a margarita a couple summers ago) and take a few photos to post.

Because my running has been more consistent the past 6 weeks, I have started to see some gains with general ease of holding a decent pace as well as running farther and faster at a lower heart rate. I'll share some more of these details as we get into training and I have more numbers to work with.

Lastly, I'll try to update this weekly as we get closer to June. I may just pick a day and have a weekly post until training starts. Or maybe not. Come back and check.