I’m racing tomorrow — sort of. I’ll be joining three of my athletes at the Polar Bear Run, a 7.6-mile paved adventure around Lake Waramaug in New Preston, CT. I’ve promised myself that I’ll behave to the best of my ability, which means running the first 5 miles no faster than 6:00/mi pace with the option of taking off a few ticks over the last 2.6 should I feel up to it. This will be the first time I’ve filled out an entry blank and stepped on a starting line since July, and while I’m nowhere near top form, I am excited to put myself back in a quasi-competitive arena again. I’ve done little to nothing in the way of hard workouts with the exception of a couple of impromptu progression runs and a few short hill repeats for fun last week. Tomorrow’s effort will be a good gauge of my current level of fitness and a fun excuse to run faster than I otherwise would on a Sunday morning.
On the whole, February turned out to be a most excellent month of training, as I was able to reestablish some consistency in my routine and put in some solid work. I didn’t miss a scheduled day on the road or on the spin bike, did my assigned ancillary exercises with regularity and totaled 30 hours and 24 minutes worth of training time over the course of four full weeks. Not an insane amount of volume by any stretch of the imagination, but it does represent a step in the right direction. My goal moving forward is to stay healthy and keep the momentum going in my quest to reach a newfound level of fitness.