2016 in Review & Looking Forward to 2017

I ran a total of 17 races in 2016: 1 marathon (DNF, 19.25 miles), 6 half marathons, 3 10Ks, 5 5Ks, and two random distances for a total of 159.2 miles. I ran 1,297 miles including training runs over the past year, which helped bring my 5K pace down by 2 minutes. I dealt with a couple of mostly minor injuries (including the never going away plantar fasciitis). Overall, I'm proud of what I pushed myself to achieve this past year.

For 2017, I only have two races planned: the Pittsburgh Half Marathon in May and the Chicago Marathon in October. The Pittsburgh Half Marathon will mostly be an excuse to explore my new home city, so the Chicago Marathon is what I am going to put most of my focus toward. I know I can do better than I did in December if I stay healthy and train properly. Right now, I'm still focused on recovery. I'm doing pretty well, but I only ran 68 miles in January (plus the 3-6 I'll run today). I'll keep posting about progress and how training is going. I'm probably overdue a post on my experiences taking two months of spin classes...

Figuring Out A Training Plan

I mentioned yesterday that I was going to do a Hal Higdon plan to train up for a marathon. However, I realize that, with my race schedule, I needed to change it to fit my needs. I also had to make sure I wasn't going up in mileage by more than 10% in any given week (generally every other week). I also wanted a plan that I could realistically keep increasing (at that same slow rate) to train up for an ultra. Sometimes the distances are a bit wacky because I have a 5K that weekend, which is definitely a shorter distance than my normal weekend runs. With this plan, I'm also planning that a majority of my half marathons will actually just be at training pace, not race pace. Which I think will be good if I get in that mentality of not trying to go nuts on race day. Here's my plan... interested in any comments anyone has:

Running plan from May 30 to November 13

14 Miles: Done

This was my last long training run. I spent 20 minutes taping up my feet and my knees and I think it paid off. At no point was I limping (though I was pretty slow for a few miles). I set a new PR for distance and pace for distances over 10 miles. I finished 13.1 in 2:22:17 and finished the whole 14.15 in 2:34:37 at a pace of 10:56 min/mile. Considering how sore I was when I started, I'm feeling pretty confident that I can hit my goal of 2:10 come race day... maybe even sub 2! Considering I did my full marathon in 5:55 6.5 years ago, I'm feeling pretty damn amazing about these times.