I’ve never logged my miles, but I realized in January that I was interested in keeping track of how many miles I ran, especially as I trained for the marathon. I used logyourun.com to record everything and tried to be as accurate as possible. I even mapped out routes that I was so sure of the mileage using Google Pedometer – to find that I had been estimating wrong (no wonder my 4 mile runs were taking so darn long!). So here’s my mileage for the past 4 months (and my pathetic attempts at occasionally lifting weights or doing yoga):
Uh does that seem weird to anyone else? First of all, my total monthly distance seems ridiculously high. But, this would account for why I was so exhausted during March (seriously, that was a tough month for me). Secondly, why was my distance relatively the same every month? When I looked at the months individually, in January I followed my training plan nearly to a T, and did the same during February, which was the month with the fewest days off from running (only 5!). In March, I took 9 days off from running, the most of any of the 4 months, which would account for my lower mileage there. Finally, I took off only 6 days in April. I was surprised that my taper didn’t bring my mileage down, but I did a couple of really long runs at the beginning of the month and was very consistent with my running, so that added up. I guess I’m just surprised that I don’t see a great fluctuation in miles reflecting the increasing intensity of my training program.
I’m going to keep tracking my mileage to see how it drops now that marathon training is over. I am interested to see what a more normal month looks like in terms of mileage.
I have been wondering about marathon recovery recently. Everyone keeps asking how many weeks I’m taking off. WEEKS?!?! Don’t you people understand that is like asking me to not eat chocolate and/or peanut butter for weeks? I run because I love it, and I’m not looking for reasons to take time off! Sadly I already miss it and want to be back out there, but I think my quads would stab me if I tried. My basic rule on returning to running after a race is to do what my body tells me. I know that I want to start running again, so after some time off, I will head back out there and do slow, short jogs that don’t stress my body.
I just read this post that mentions the “one-day-a-mile rule, i.e., you don’t run hard after a marathon until 26.21875 days after.” Sounds like a good rule to follow! Unfortunately, I have a sinking suspicion that in my training euphoria, I may have signed up for the Healthy Kidney 10K next weekend…. thing is, I won’t be sure that I signed up until NYRR sends (or doesn’t send) me an email telling me to pick up my race number. Yes, I am this disorganized and forgetful.
So, my question is: If I signed up for that race, should I run it? I’m guessing that my legs will not be hurting, but I’m scared of an injury. Any words of wisdom/advice would be greatly appreciated.
Also, I must confess that I went to the gym today and walked on the treadmill (ugh kill me) for 3 10 minute intervals, and did some upper body weights in between. I’ve noticed a significant de-musclization/ chubbing-up of my upper arm area. I want MObama guns for the summer, and by golly I’m gonna get ‘em.
