It has been well over a year since I did one of these. I guess you could call 2020 sort of a “rebuilding” year for me. With so many races canceled and plans changing constantly, I felt uninspired. I honestly thought, “Why bother with boring my followers with numbers and stats with no fun race recaps to join them?” As I start this new year, I have a different outlook. I have had quite a few people comment and reach out to me telling me that my blog and social media posts are inspiring to them. And I find that these posts inspire me – I enjoy looking back on where I have been and how far I have come with my running, nutrition, and general outlook on life.
Let’s start with a look back on my 2019 mileage vs. 2020 mileage:
- January 2019: 100.03 miles / January 2020: 50.0 miles
- February 2019: 100.12 miles / February 2020: 78.6 miles
- March 2019: 116.26 miles / March 2020: 84.3 miles
- April 2019: 104.41 miles / April 2020: 96.4 miles
- May 2019: 111.69 miles / May 2020: 83.3 miles
- June 2019: 100.07 miles / June 2020: 72.5 miles
- July 2019: 93.25 miles / July 2020: 84.0 miles
- August 2019: 97.13 miles / August 2020: 94.7 miles
- September 2019: 113.77 miles / September 2020: 50.1 miles
- October 2019: 89.7 miles / October 2020: 53.7 miles
- November 2019: 77.1 miles / November 2020: 69.3 miles
- December 2019: 37.8 miles / December 2020: 86.0 miles
- TOTAL 2019: 1041.26 miles / TOTAL 2020: 902.9
My 2019 mileage beat my 2020 mileage by 138.36 miles – that’s over 5 marathons, which is the amount of marathon races I have run in. I have set my goals high for 2021 – aiming for over 1200 running miles this year, plus 365 miles of walking!
So let’s talk about the details of November and December 2020, starting with something new I have started tracking. Inspired by the option to “run a marathon in a month” from the Indianapolis Monumental Marathon, as well as a monthly challenge from my challenge group early on in 2020, I have started tracking my best 26.2 mile paces each month for my “marathon in a month”.
November 2020 Marathon in a Month: 5:09:37, average mile pace 11:49 per mile (if this were a real marathon, it would be a HUGE PR for me!)
December 2020 Marathon in a Month: 5:25:24, average mile pace 12:25 per mile (still a PR!)
What was I training for? On November 2nd I started an 18 week marathon training plan from Hal Higdon. I chose his Novice 1 plan because it had been over a year since I properly trained for a marathon and with everything that had been going on since August in my life I wanted to do something that could get the job done but not be too challenging. I don’t expect, nor do I care to get a PR in the marathon that I am training for – Little Rock Marathon. Honestly part of that is because I am not even sure if it is going to happen. I have not even signed up yet due to the ongoing pandemic and things changing all the time. Little Rock Marathon has announced that they plan to put the event on in person and that they will NOT do a virtual option if the race is canceled due to COVID-19. That does not make me anxious to sign up for it. If it sells out, oh well. (I really did a lot of work on that FOMO thing in 2020, too.) Since drafting this post, I have found out that Little Rock Marathon has been postponed until November. I am glad that I chose a training plan that wasn’t overly challenging, and I am very glad that I had not signed up for the race yet.
Any races? Technically I suppose I did the Indianapolis Monumental Marathon in a Month as well as the Girls on the Run 5k virtually, but I totally forgot to submit my results for either one. OOPS. The marathon in a month is posted above, and as for the Girls on the Run 5k, I decided to walk it! I completed it in 52:23!
How is it going? Training actually went really well in November and December despite a few setbacks in my personal life. I have been tracking my workouts on a spreadsheet that has the training plan(s) I am following (I also input a “Dopey” training plan and a 50k training plan into this spreadsheet, in case I don’t do Little Rock and/or decide I still want to do those crazy things, too.) and I mark the training plans with colors – green meaning I completed the workout as laid out in the training plan, yellow meaning it was close but not exactly the same and red meaning I missed that workout completely. So far there’s lots of green on that spreadsheet!
What do I hope to improve on in January? My January goal is to focus on hydration and cross training. You can read more about my monthly challenge here. I will be posting weekly updates on how that challenge is going (you can read the first update here.) as well as other training updates along the way. As for cross training, I have made it a goal to complete a new program from Beachbody called #MBF – I don’t plan to do it exactly as laid out with daily workouts because I have realized that is too overwhelming for me while training for a marathon. Instead I’ll space them out. A friend of mine is doing them, too, and her goal is to finish the program by February 16th so I am going to try to jump on her bandwagon! Since finding out that Little Rock Marathon is postponed, I am re-considering my goals for the year. I have tried out some Beachbody workouts recently that I really enjoyed and would like to do more of a mix of running and other workouts rather than be so heavily focused on running. That may mean not doing my at home Dopey Challenge idea or my at home 50k idea. I haven’t deleted my training plans yet, but I am definitely leaning towards less running.
RD on the Run 