Andrew Schrauben

101 miles on the year following this morning's run with Haven! We went 3.1 miles in the dark, pops-style. I ran hard to one light pole, then easy to the next one, then hard to the third one, and so on for the whole run. Haven loved the fast part but got impatient with the slow stuff.

101 miles in 20 separate runs, just over 5 miles per run average. Even though it was a goal to run more frequently this year, I'm still happily surprised with how well I've been doing at it. My body is actually getting acclimated to this frequency as my legs can recover from easy runs in less than a day; hard runs still take a day or so.

What's helped me do this is having a plan: Mon, Wed, Fri I join my co-workers for an easy-paced 5 mile run, although I run Friday's as a negative split (easy first half, hard second half). Tue and Thu I do speed work, which can be track laps, pops, hill repeats, tempo runs, or other similar workouts. Saturday is a day off. Sunday is a long run; 8-12 miles so far but that will go up when the weather warms up.

The result is that if I miss a day, my plan is all messed up so even if I don't feel like running on a given day, it's mentally easier to just do it and keep the plan intact instead of having to figure out something.

It's very, very early in the year but I'm on pace for about 300 runs, which is amazing considering that last year was the most I ever ran and I went out just 143 times! Compared to 128 times in 2005 and 101 in 2004. Hopefully I can keep this up, but I'm sure that at some point it won't be as smooth sailing as it has been...