February by the numbers

I hadn't seen February as a particularly good month as I thought about it in my head, but the numbers were better than I thought. 280 miles on a short month, and dead on my loose number goal of 10 miles a day average for the year.

Two days off is a really good start to the training block. I felt like I really lulled there in the middle of February, but the combination of being sick, the family sick, and class all had me backed up and tired. The stretch of the last 10 days or so has been particularly good, with a solid mix of hills and strength training in there. I feel it in my legs when I wake up, and I feel it for sure on the run for a while, but I'm beginning to also get that feeling of hitting 15 miles and starting to feel good again. To me this means I've been doing some things right, but also that it will be a while longer before I'm truly ready to go.

This year I've tried to add a purpose to my training and get in a long slow build up so that I can enter a period of sharpening 8 weeks before my goal event and show up ready. Most everything else will be secondary, and I'll likely not take much of a taper going into CC50K or Big Horn, but there are always ways to make it work. I feel good right now, and my confidence (though perhaps misguided) is coming along. I think I'll write up something about how that can affect my training/racing in a very real way. Funny thing is the more you think about it the more you hear it all around you, I even listened to a Radiolab podcast that essentially confirmed what I had going on in my head, but I'll link that into a real post on the subject of confidence and it's role in my running.

Now I'm 1 week 4 days from Way Too Cool and getting stoked!