Logging Miles and Adding a Touch of Speed

Last week was another 80 mile week for me. That's my third week of 80 miles this month. After finishing my week on Saturday, I took Sunday off. I ran 12 miles on Monday and 7.5 on Tuesday, and I now only need two miles to reach my first 300 mile month. I'm running a three mile fun run tomorrow at work and a 7.5 mile easy run after work, so I should move well past the 300 mark.

My plan was to reduce my mileage to somewhere in the 60 mile range, with a few faster runs included to get me ready to start training for an October marathon. However, last week I received an e-mail from my assignment officer saying that I should expect to be in a new job by the end of the year. He then listed six possible jobs for me to put in rank order. Of the six jobs, five were on the East Coast (ranging from Maine to Miami) and the other was in Alaska. With this new information, I'm not going to register for a marathon in California knowing that I could be living 3,000 miles away from here on race day. My new plan is to just log a lot of miles for the next six weeks. At that point, I hope to have more information and be able to make a more informed decision regarding a fall marathon.

In addition to logging more miles, I'm going to make a point to run a few races this summer. Last year I didn't race at all between May and the end of December. Who knows maybe running more miles will lead to a PR or two.