It wasn’t easy, but I expected June to be worse than it was. Yay?
My Connecticut run didn’t happen until July 1, so it will have to wait until my next monthly wrap-up (and then it’ll have to share time with my upcoming Portland runs). At least for June, all my runs were in North Carolina.
It was my first time working with an actual professional coach, and so far I think it’s been pretty good. I’m still working on adding a few new things to my routine (stretching, foam rolling), but overall, I think I’m on the right track. *knock on wood*
June 2017
Total Mileage: 130.11 miles
Average Pace: 11:28/mile
Number of Runs: 20
Last Month (May 2017): 137.20 miles
Last Year (June 2016): 89.67 miles
Races: None
Total Mileage for 2017 (through June 30): 805.84 miles
Last June was the end of my injury recovery, so I won’t have to bring it up again in next month’s wrap up. (Really, I don’t need to bring it up ever again, because it wasn’t much fun.) My June mileage was down slightly, mainly due to the stupid calendar, although my trip at the tail end of the month didn’t help (but the trip was totally worth it).
Let’s check in on my goals for 2017, now that the year is…half over?!?!?
Goal 1: 1500 miles
Average miles per day is 805.84 miles divided by 181 days, that’s about 4.45 miles per day, times 365 days for the year, comes out to over 1,625 miles for the year. Last month’s projection was 1,633 miles, so I slipped a little more, but that still blows away my goal, and I suspect that the next couple of months will see that projection go up.
Goal 2: 6 races, with 2 that are 13.1 or greater
No races this month. I still have 4 races overall, and only 1 so far that’s 13.1 or greater. I’m looking at a warm up race, most likely in September, before New York City, and those two races would put me at my goal.
Goal 3: A PR in 3 different races
I still have 2 PRs this year. I probably won’t be shooting for a PR in my warm up race, so I guess I’m going to have to PR in New York City. No pressure.
I’m still struggling with my non-specific goals (with one notable exception which I’ll get back to). I’m not doing a great job at the non-running exercise, but with my marathon training about to ramp up, I really need to get on that. My diet? Cooking? Ha! And my June blog output consisted of exactly 4 weekly wrap-ups and the May monthly wrap-up. Sigh.
The one goal that’s actually been going well? Slower easy runs and faster hard runs. Especially the slower ones. It’s made a huge difference. I’ve found during my long runs this past month, even as the temperature and humidity have gone up, I’ve managed to slow down enough that I don’t need to take very many walk breaks. I still have to stop if I want to drink out of a water fountain, and I usually walk a few steps after the water fountain, but other than that, I feel like I’m doing a little bit better.
Best Run: June 24, 12.02 miles, 11:58/mile pace
A run when it was 74 degrees and humid, where I had to use Runkeeper on my phone because I forgot my Garmin watch (and had to carry the phone in a Ziploc bag so it wouldn’t get fried by sweat), and then I had to stop in the middle because somehow I managed to turn off my phone’s GPS in my pocket, where I got mud all over my shoes as a result of some recent flooding, and where I finished with my slowest average pace of any run in June. And this is my best run of the month. I wasn’t expecting that either. It’s that whole overcoming adversity thing, I guess.
This is one of the runs I was talking about when I mentioned that the slower paces were helping my long runs. Honestly, if this had happened last year, it would have turned into a complete disaster, probably with an average pace close to 13:00/mile. Instead, I was actually faster after I stopped to turn my phone’s GPS back on that I was before. Go figure.
I’ll also give a shout out to my June 28 run. It was a fartlek workout, and while it wasn’t my fastest workout run this month, it happened to be my last run of any type for June, and it was really nice to end a month with a run that didn’t completely suck.
Worst Run: June 17, 11.01 miles, 11:54/mile pace
My phone died because of this run. My waterproof arm band didn’t protect my phone from sweat, and it stopped working, so I had to replace it. That will “win” the Worst Run award any time. I suppose this didn’t completely suck as a run, though.
While June felt like I was just continuing to work on base building, July is where things are going to start ramping up…after I get back from Portland. And except for the trip to Portland, I expect a month of terrible weather, but again *knock on wood* I feel like I’m handling it just a little bit better than last year. We’ll see.