Digits: June 2016

I ended the month on a fast note with my running.  My last run on the 30th was a five mile jaunt on my normal trail route.  I typically run this at an 8.5-9 minute pace, but for whatever reason I was flying on Thursday.  I’ve done this run almost 200 times over the past 3 years and while was 30 seconds off a PR, I did manage to dip under an 8 minute pace.  This is very rare for me as I am not a speed guy.  Looking back through my training log, it was only the 21st time in 4 years I’ve finished a run with an average pace faster than 8 minutes.  Interestingly, it was the second time in June I did it including my last race.  This was the third time in 2016, which matches my total from 2015 and beats my 2014 total of 2.  Since my aborted attempts this past spring at speed training, I haven’t really done anything to get faster.  It may have something to do with my recent long run hill training or may just be completely random.  Sometimes the stars will happen to align for you and you’ll just have a nice stretch of training and racing.  If that’s the case, then I’ll enjoy it while it lasts.  I’m not focused on getting faster so it’s no big deal if I start to slow down over the next little while.  Goodness knows I’ll be “running” slowly once I get to ES100.

Besides the 2 fast runs, I had a great month of training.  I set a situp PR (1,131) and averaged the most elevation gain per mile during the month ever at 152 feet.  Last fall, I had maxed out at 143 feet per mile leading up to OC100 so this is right where I want to be.  Well, I guess I’d rather be closer to 180-200 feet, but I just don’t have an opportunity to run/hike/crawl that much vertical.  So I’m happy with what I have.

I ended up missing 3 days of my 4×10 challenge.  For some reason, I just can’t find the motivation to bust out some additional exercises after getting back from a 3-5 hour run.  Go figure.  July will be difficult for me with this as I’ll be camping with my son for 5 days at the end of the month.  Whenever I get out of my normal routines, it’s tough to find the time to get these exercises in.  I never have a problem getting my run done, but these seem to get missed.  I would like to PR again with situps and get close to my plank PR (86 minutes).  In order to do that though, I can’t afford to miss more than the 3 days I did in June.

I need to up my sleep game.  I’m not prioritizing this like I should.  I’ve had way too many 7 and 7.5 hour nights recently.  I don’t think this has adversely impacted me yet, but it’s definitely increasing my injury risk.  July will be my peak training heading into ES100 and I’ll need to make sure I’m over 8.5 per night in the month.

Have you been able to stay on track since the weather got hot and humid?