Oh March

I thought we could be friends. I thought you would be warm and kind.

Oh March, how could I have been so wrong?

I was still optimistic the very first weekend of March when I skipped my long run because of a basketball tournament. It's okay, I thought, I will have plenty of time to run. Just a few days after that my treadmill started feeling wonky and then it got worse and I couldn't run on it at all. The drive belt inside the motor had to be replaced. So my one skipped run turned into 3 more skipped runs. I managed my long run but because it had been a while and I had to pick up 82 cases of girl scout cookies that day I cut it short and just did 6. We got my treadmill working and I tried to start where I left off, but that wasn't a good idea. Since then I've had to skip runs because of class field trips and days of no school and yesterday when the newspaper delivery guy decided to come to my front door which never happens and wanted to hand deliver the paper only I had no idea if he was my newspaper guy because the paper is always at the end of the driveway and never ever hand delivered and after some discussion and no response from the actual newspaper I decided to call the police just in case they were looking for houses to rob and so then I didn't want to go downstairs and run on the treadmill in my basement. So, yeah, there have been lots of skipped runs this March.

And it has not been warm and kind. It has been cold, so cold, and wet. I will be glad when March is over.

Hopefully April is kinder, because a couple of weeks ago when I was having a particularly not fun day I decided to sign up for a couple of races. On top of the races I had already signed up for. So I have:

April 19: Dodge the Deer 5K
May 3: Spring Runoff
May 9-10: Ragnar Cape Cod
May 31: Freihofer's

I'm letting Vader mow the lawn and transition to his new job in June and July and then:

August 16?: Clove Run 5K
October: Mohawk Hudson Half Marathon

I have a new-old plan on my fridge to get me PR-ready for the May 3 race, so now I just have to actually stick to it and not let any more random things get in the way!

And February is done

I always make some sort of excuse for my February stats saying that it's the shortest month so I had less time to run. I'm really pleased that I didn't use that as an excuse this month. Even with taking most of the February break off from running & exercise, I still did pretty well.

Stats:

Mileage: 58.9
Runs: 11
Cross Training days: 9 (I'm including days I shoveled snow instead of following routines, because I did a lot of that)

I ran 5 fewer days than I did in January but only 3.1 less miles. Last February I ran 34.3, so I am definitely going up. I'm doing better with my tempo runs and still doing well with the intervals. I had been focusing on increasing my speed for each fast interval and lengthening the time of the fast portions, but last Thursday I decided to take a different approach. I went back to doing just 30 seconds at 7:30 (8.0 with 1% incline), but instead of walking each slow part, I ran slow. I wound up walking only 4 of them (compared to 12), so I was pretty happy. It's all well and good to get my faster parts faster, but if I have to walk after each one I'm not going to make that much progress. So for now, I'm going to master running in between each interval and then bump up the speed again.

I should be out doing my long run right now, but it's cold. I just don't have it in me to do it now. I also don't have any motivation to do 8 miles on the treadmill. I am afraid tomorrow won't work either because it's going to--surprise--snow again. If SkyWalker wins his basketball game later today, he'll be playing in the semifinals tomorrow anyway. His team has won one of the tournament games and lost another, so this game will decide it. I am technically not in training for anything specific, so I am okay with skipping it this weekend if I have to. Sometimes you need to let life be in charge.