October Stats

In light of my lame post this morning (and to procrastinate a bit more at work), I tallied up my October miles.  My NY resolution this year was 1300 miles, which seemed reasonable since last year I came in at 1284.8 and that included my wedding month of 39.5 miles.  But what I didn't know at the beginning of the year was that 2010 would include a Swedish and Russian vacation extravaganza, which meant similarly little running for several weeks. 

And then my marathon training season seemed to be slightly less intense than last year.  June I was 6 miles over last June.  July I was 6 under.  August I was 2 over, September I was 10 under.  So coming into October, I think YTD I was down 17.5 miles.  But I knew that in 09, I had very weak months in October (due to a post-marathon cold that lasted more than 2 weeks) and December (holiday laziness).  I figured I could easily crank out some extra miles one of those months to recover from any deficit, and then buckle down a little for one of the other weak months and make up the 15 extra I needed for my resolution.

Well, October was the month.  I beat last October by more than 30 miles, which means I'm now a net of 20 miles ahead of last year at the end of October.  Score.  Now I can just repeat last November and December, and I'll be all set.

The obvious flaw in that plan was that last year I ran full marathons in Oct, Nov and Dec, and I'm not doing that this year.  After the half next weekend, I think I'm probably going to relax a bit, but most likely still do the local full in December, but just for fun, not for time.  But I just need 171 more miles over the next 2 months, which works out to about 22 miles per week, allowing a week off for Xmas.  Totally doable I say right now.  Barring injury of course.  Last year I wiped out during the last week of December and sprained my ankle severely, making for a light January! 

So, October 2010 = 133.9 miles.  Average of 33.5 per week, or 4.3 per day. 

It felt like a nice step back.  I haven't had a month this low since May, which included the Swedish-Russian vacation extravaganza and was before I started official marathon training for the season. 

I successfully avoided all those post-marathon illnesses that seem to plague so many people (including me many years).  Maybe the flu shot is working?  Actually, our office and my husband have been healthy all month, so that's probably helped more than anything.  But as soon as a co-worker or hubby gets sick, I'll probably be right behind them.