Game Reset

I like graphs. They can really present a lot of information in very little space. This graph is my year so far in a nutshell. All those countless hours pounding the pavement, and what do I have to show for it? A line graph that took me all of about 10 minutes to create in excel. Anyway, at first glance, I must admit I was a little disappointed in how the graph looked. I was kind of expecting to see a linear line heading straight up until eventually it peaked and held steady at 100 miles. You know, something similar to the Pike's Peak elevation chart. Instead I have the Boston Marathon elevation chart. Why?

I suppose it shouldn’t be totally unexpected to see what looks like some inconsistency in my week to week mileage. I took a fairly methodical and conservative approach to building my mileage over the winter months. I would go 3 weeks of building or maintaining mileage, and then take a stepback week. I mentioned somewhere in an earlier post that I was never really able to figure out how to do the stepback week though. I mean it is called a "step" back, not a "leap" back. As the chart indicates, I probably was a little too "aggressive" in those down weeks, cutting mileage by as much as 50% in some weeks. So going forward, I've taken a page out of Mike's book, and pretty much just eliminated the stepback week. While that is not to say I won't take one if I feel like I need it, I won't be scheduling them for now. I think I've acclimated to the 100 mile weeks and since I won't be going too much higher than that until at least after my October marathon, there probably isn't as much of a need to allow my body some downtime.

The rolling 3 week mileage totals looks a little better, but still those down weeks really killed that line too. I guess the funny thing is that I would have been pretty happy with a 3 week rolling average of 60 miles at any point in my running career up until this year. This year, it is my low point. I guess I've made some pretty significant strides this year. The result really don't lie either. I'm faster and stronger than I've ever been.

My monthly mileage looks like this:

Jan: 279
Feb: 289
Mar: 346
Apr: 320
May: 371
June: 409

That's a little more consistent. With a fairly significant injury in April and a marathon that I had to recover from (which happened after the injury), the dip in that month is easy to understand. Other than that month, things are moving in the right direction.

I was able to get in 18 miles on Sunday in doubles which brought me to 100 for the week. It's the 5th 100 mile week in a row for me and 8th out of the last 9 weeks. Unfortunately, I've fallen into a bit of a cycle, where I fall behind early in the week and then work like heck near the end of the week to make up the mileage. Some of it has been unavoidable but it's not what I want to be doing. I hope to break that cycle this week with some solid early week runs and then coast into the weekend. I have another 5K race on Saturday and my PR streak is definitely in jeopardy in this race. If I go into with dead legs, I can kiss the streak goodbye. I know it really doesn't matter, but you take motivation where you can find it.