February In Review

Hello March!

Thanks for bringing winter with you.

We had the storm of the season this past weekend, and I could not be more relieved that it decided to show up AFTER we were home safe from the Phoenix. I can’t imagine needing to do a training run in that. I also had the luxury of having a four day weekend, which does not happen often, so I spent most of Sunday and Monday sitting on the couch watching the snowfall.

February was a pretty great month! A 20 miler, 22 miler, a taper and of course the BQ! (I still cannot believe it actually happened). I had a serious case of the taper crazies this time around, but other than that, everything went pretty smoothly leading up to the race. We had some amazing weather in February, including some 70* days, which is unseasonably warm, and I took advantage of it by running after work with the pup several times.

Let’s break it down!

Total miles: 142.7

I didn’t do a training log for this past week, since it didn’t include much running up until the marathon. But, I did 3 easy miles on the treadmill on Tuesday and Thursday, and a very easy, very slow, 2 miles to shake out the legs on Sunday post-race (which helped with my recovery a LOT. I felt much better Monday and even better on Tuesday). I feel really good about this month’s miles. It included my last two long training runs, and my peak weeks of training + taper. Overall, it was just a big month and those miles were probably some of the most important.

Total Days Run: 19

During taper I cut down my days of running to 4x/week, rather than five, and I think it played an important part in resting my legs.

Total Strength Days: 4

Not my best. However, when taper started, I did start incorporating more ab work each week. I tried to do an ab workout at least 4 times a week and I hope to continue that.

Rest Days: 7

The most I’ve ever had since starting this blog, but I rested a LOT during taper, so I’m pretty okay with that. It seemed to work out in my favor.

Goals from January: 

• Stay strong. I’m definitely going to say check on that one.
• Take care of myself–Meaning foam rolling, strength training and general taking care of my body. Ehh….so so. I didn’t do much strength training, or yoga, but I did do a good amount of foam rolling prior to the race.
• BQ. CHECK AND CHECK!
• Get to that start line healthy. Done. I even got made fun of at work for squirting hand sanitizer onto my hands every few minutes, but with the amount of sickness going around in all the galleries, I wasn’t about to take ANY chances.

Goals for March:

• Strength Train: I’m probably going to cut back on running for the next few weeks, so I’d like to up my strength training a bit.
• Run for fun: No watch, no pace goals, no distance goals. Just lace up and head out the door. Now that training is over, I want to run because I want to and go for as long as I feel like it.
• Pose of the Month with Kerry at Yoga on The Run: Kerry posted up that she’ll be doing a Pose of the Month, in which she practices a certain yoga pose every day for the month. She took a photo of her in the pose the first day, and will post her progress over the month. I love this idea. I’m terrible at stretching and rolling, and maintaining any kind of yoga practice, so I’m hoping this will help. I’ll be starting with a simpler pose: Seated wide-legged forward folds, to work on my flexibility (since I have almost none). I started yesterday evening and here’s my beginning photo:

Rudy came and laid right down when I was beginning the pose–he does not want to be left out. Either way, you can see I can’t really stretch very far. I may post another photo sans-Rudy so I can actually track my improvement. I’m hoping this will allow me to recuperate faster from the marathon and let me get my mileage back up to a comfortable level, while also taking care of myself. We’ll see how it goes!

I haven’t quite decided what I want to do now that the marathon is over, so for March I’d like to figure that out, while enjoying running for the sake of running.

What are some of your goals for March? I’d love to hear it!