Not much has happened on the running front since Jackson County. That was in early December and the way it shook out the race left me 163 miles short of 3,000 with about 25 days left in December…or about 6.52 Â miles per day to hit 3,000. I had no intention or planned mileage goals at the beginning of the year and would of had no clue without Strava…so with nothing on the horizon I decided to go after the 3,000 for fun.
Took a couple days off and started running on Wednesday Dec 10th. Real short and shakeoutish…I was super sore and stiff from Jackson County. That race beat the crap out of me. Getting to 3,000 was going to be real fun 🙂
With nothing to train for I just set about logging miles. Did some still pregnant running with Lindsey, lot of running with the dog, met up with Scott a bunch over the holidays, ran in Bloomington, ran new trail in the Hoosier National, and started a new podcast ( I know am  a big This American Life fan).
By the time New Years Eve rolled around I was 13 miles short of 3,000 and feeling real burnt out and tired. If I was trying to ramp back up after Jackson County I should have shut it down for like 10 days and then resumed running but with nothing happening in the future I just kept running for fun. I logged one final Monon run and shut it down for 2014.
Final stats? 395 hours of running and 3,000.5 miles of running. Thanks Strava. Pretty solid year overall and the highest mileage I’ve ever had…not sure entirely but fairly certain 2014 was it, even with having to basically take February off with an Achilles issue. Finished my first two 50 mile races, placing 6th and 2nd overall, respectively; took 5 minutes off my road marathon PR in November and finally cracked the elusive 2:50 barrier logging a 2:49. I can’t decide if I want to chase 2:40-5:45 in 2015…we’ll see. Its a grind.
It has been a slow build over the years to handle the miles. Maybe I’ll go for 3,XXX or something in 2015…but I really don’t have a goal. Seriously. Â
2015 has gotten off to a slow start and that is fine with me. I took a week off at the beginning of the year just to rest a little and have slowly start to ramp things back up.
Dec 29th – Jan 4th: 31 miles and nothing after Dec 31st
Jan 5th – Jan 11th: 41 miles. Started to run again later in the week
Jan 12th – Jan 18th: Â 32 miles. Louis Frederick Hein was born on January 15th.
Jan 19th – 25th: 49 miles. Trying to figure out the new schedule of work, baby, sleep, and running.
Jan 26th – Feb 1st: 52 miles
Feb 2nd – Feb 8th: 51 miles
Around 50 miles a week seems to be where I am landing right now. Which is fine for now. I’ve been sprinkling in some effort in the running but the vast majority of it has been easy with any hills I can find thrown in. Hills are hard to find in Central Indiana. It is real annoying.  Ideally I’d like to have my non training miles closer to 65-70 but that will take time to adjust to Louis and the new family dynamic. Running is important and Lindsey and I prioritize but sometimes it needs to take a back seat. I’ll get there. Plenty of time in 2015 to log the miles and get fit.
I did sketch out a long run schedule to get me to the Carmel marathon in April. I will be pacing the 3:15 marathon group again this year. It was a blast last year and  I am looking forward to doing it again. The furthest I have ran since Jackson County was 14.5 miles last Saturday so I’d like to get my long run up over the next couple weeks so I don’t get tired pacing the race. I am not worried about it at all…I just don’t want the marathon to drain me for a couple of weeks afterward.
Besides that not much is happening. I signed up for the Kettle Moraine 100K in early June so I will start to focus on that soon. Lindsey will start running again shortly so I  get to geek out over that which will be fun too! We’re thinking about doing the Red Eye Relay as a two man team in July but I’m worried the miles will be too much for her too soon. It would be 110 total so 55 each. Depending on how that shakes out, I’ll do 55 solo or skip it. We’ll see. Maybe I can find someone to do it with me if Lindsey can’t.
Keep running.