Killing Time at Work

As I sit here at my desk, trying to find ways to avoid work, I remember that I haven’t posted to my blog in a few days. What better time to update the site than when I’m at work?

This weekend was the weekend when Annie returned to the U.S. after spending a month sinigng in Italy. I actually didn’t see her until Saturday night because I spent the day in Northern Virginia with my family for our semi-annual gettogether. Anyway, I took the weekend off and didn’t run at all, which was OK. By Sunday I was itching to get back to the routine, though. I ran yesterday afternoon, partly because I was too lazy to get up early and go to the gym, but also to continue to work to find the best time of day to run for my personal taste. While I like running in the morning, it’s so hard for me to get up and get dressed and get out of the door! However, I think that it might end up having to be m running time because it affords me so much more free time in the evenings.

Anyway, yesterday’s run was OK. Not the best but certainly not the worst. Since I don’t have a race to train for in the next month, I needed some other kind of goal to train towards. So, I’ve undertaken a Mileage Expansion Project for the next few months. Basically, I want to push my mileage up so I’m getting more distance in each week. The basic tenets are:

1. Increase my daily mileage (4 runs per week) by 10%

2.Run at that distance for two weeks before increasing another 10%

3. This should push my normal mileage up from 3.5 miles per run now to 6 miles per normal run by the beginning of November.

4. Increase the long runs by about one mile each two week segment. This should basically put my long distance at 10 miles by the beginning of November.

5. Freeze any improvements during racing periods so as to minimize the chances for injuries and sub-par performance.

The idea of this program will be to use the final two months of summer and first weeks of fall to pick up some mileage outside and to prepare for those winter months of running exclusively (or very nearly so) indoors and perpetually in darkness. Moreover, it will give me a good starting point for when I begin training for the 2008 spring and summer. I’ll pretty much use this program to get miles, and then use the winter to get some more speed and maintain my fitness, and then start piling on more mileage come February as I prepare for the Flying Pig Half Marathon in May. My objective is to be doing 15 mile + long runs by the time the race rolls around and just crush it (crush it meaning I run it in a decent time, not setting any records).
Anyway, the next step in this long progression is the Mileage Expansion Project, also to be known as the Baltimore Running Project, Phase II. I’m still developing the other phases, which will be the topic of a future post.