The Training Begins

I’ll start at my last race, the Old Dominion 100 which was on June 3rd. It did not go as planned. I had to stop at just over 64 miles because of some knee and ankle issues. I took two weeks off completely to recover and heal. After that, I did a few long mountain bike rides to get moving again but my total running mileage in June, aside from the 64 during the race, was 12 miles. I was ramping back up VERY slowly while I did some rehab on my damaged joints.

In July I started training again, shooting for 4 – 5 running sessions per week, and managed to rack up 91 total miles for the month. I didn’t have a plan in place, other than to get at least 4 runs in per week at a steady, slow pace, one of them being a long run of 1 to 2 hours.

August was more of the same, unfocused training while trying to be consistent. I only managed 79 total miles for the month. Clearly, I was going to need something to focus my efforts so I started planning what would be necessary to do a sub-24 hour 100-mile race at the Mississippi 100 on March 1st. It was time to start an actual training plan.

In the first two weeks of September, I logged 51 miles, a good increase from August. I also hired a coach to help me establish a solid plan and to provide some external perspective on my progress along the way. I’ve never had a coach before so I wasn’t sure what it would be like. In the first few weeks of running a plan created by someone I knew I had made a good choice. It’s been valuable to have someone structure a training progression and to be accountable to someone. My total mileage for September was 134 miles. A significant increase from the two months prior. Many of the September miles were from the second half of the month, once my coach started dictating my workouts. Many of these miles were at a higher intensity than I was used to running. I’ll get into the structure and workouts I’m doing in later installments. For now, I’m establishing my starting point.

To recap: