Recovery before breakfast and some reflections on a month...

Woke up after a decent night's sleep at about 8:15, and as the sky was blue and the ground was white I thought I'd get my recovery run in before breakfast.  Well wrapped up, as it was bitterly cold, I did a very steady 4 miles up to Halton East and back.  Kept an eye on the HR which hardly got over 120 - maxed out at 129, but the average was 115 for the session.

This being the last day of the first month of my marathon build up I thought I'd take stock and see where I am.  Total mileage for the month is 209, far and away the most miles I've ever done - in contrast my peak month's mileage in 2007 (the year I thought I was in good shape) was 90.  Seems unbelievable looking back but that was March 07 and had 3 of my long runs in it, so my total running apart from those runs was about 7m a week - and I was surprised when I conked out at 16m!

Looking at weekly mileage this time shows I've just done my 5th 40m+ week on the bounce too.  Long runs are probably slightly ahead of schedule with 3 20 milers in the bag, and yesterday's 22.5m was a bonus.  The midweek MP sessions are really helping, and so far they're enjoyable - whether that remains the case when I move up to 10m at MP out of 12 total is yet to be seen.

Niggles and injury-wise things seem ok - I've been pretty well behaved about icing and stuff when I get an ache, but I do want to get a sports massage sorted - the lady recommended by runningbear is back from her winter jollies soon.

So - what's going to change for this month?  Not much, really - long runs are going well, although I'd like to get up to 5m at MP towards the end of Feb.  I'm also going to increase the length of at least one of my steady runs to 8 or maybe 10m, and I might swap my MP effort run for something a bit shorter and faster occasionally (say 1 in 3, maybe during a bit of a cutback week).

That should leave the average week looking a bit like this:

M: Steady 6 at lunch, maybe up to 8 or 10 by the end of the month (probably have to be end of the day)
T: 10m with 8m at MP, increasing to 12 with 10
W: Steady 6 at lunch or bike commute
T: Track session - probably 4x1m or 3x2m reps
F (or S): Long run - 20 or 22m building to 5m at MP
S: Recovery
S: Bike ride

Of course I've no doubt that races, family and work stuff will bugger this up nearly every week, but as long as I can keep the midweek MP effort and the LR, the other stuff will just happen.

Onwards and upwards...