Back to Rogue

I guess I can talk about my spring goals now that I have started running again. I took about 6 weeks off of running after St. George to let my legs heal. Once I could run again without any pain I started upping the mileage and have been running with Tara earlier in the day. It has been really nice to run starting at 4-5pm rather than having to wait until almost 6. There have been so many days that we have been done running by 6pm and can just chill out the rest of the evening. It's also nice to not have to run in the dark these days.

So, what's next? Tara and I have been talking about joining Team Rogue. We went to hear Steve talk about the upcoming season on Dec 9. I know that the high mileage training will work for me and I'm excited to already be building my miles. I completed week 1 of the 90 mile build-up last week and am now on week 2. So far, the only thing that has been painful was the overly-hilly 14 miler that we ran on Saturday (which was really 14.65 according to gmaps) and the freezing cold temps this week. Other than that, I'm not hurting with the mileage increase, yet. I'm looking forward to running the medium long run (12 miles) this afternoon.

I've sent Steve an email with my recent running history and a little bit about what I would like to accomplish this spring. I'm looking forward to talking to him at office hours next week about his thoughts on my running. My body's response to the high mileage training is the unknown in all of this. I know my body has handled multiple 65-70 mile weeks in a row with 2 quality workouts a week. I've peaked at 70 miles in two or three different seasons thus far. Ninety miles as my peak weeks should be a goal that I can shoot for, so hopefully my body will cooperate. If not, I won't be too disappointed about running fewer miles.

I plan to run the Country Music Marathon in Nashville. It is the weekend after Marathon Monday in Boston. I have no official time goal yet, but I know that this is not my ultimate goal race...I'm saving that for the fall. We'll just have to wait and see how my body responds to the training and see if I will be running 3:40, 3:35, 3:30 or better come April.