First a look back at September. The modest total distance goal of 18km was passed, but only by 2km. My other goal, which was to avoid injury, was not achieved because I tweaked my knee. It meant an 8 day break from running, but I did manage to get a bike ride in there. I would have liked to bike more, but it is a lot easier for me to go for a pre-lunch jog than bike to and from work.
I also finally figured out how to read the run plans in Jack Daniels' Running Formula book, so out of the 8 runs in September the last two were done correctly. One run was also a 2km race. On those last two runs I also started my tracking at the beginning of the 5 minute walk warm-up and stopped after the 5 minute walk cool down. This kind of inflates the distance and the pace of the run. Not sure yet if I'll keep doing it.
Looking at October, I think I'll set the goal at 24km. Which brings me to my goal for 2014. I ran my longest run, 14.57 km, in October 2013. My total for 2013 was 462 km. Considering I had only started up running again in March of that year, I didn't think it was unreasonable that I could beat that total. So I had set myself the lofty goal of 600km in total as well as setting new PRs for 5k and 10, and running a half-marathon distance.
Clearly with a total of 123km and only three months to go trying to reach my previous goals would be asking to get injured again. So I am changing my 2014 goals to a total of 210km and avoiding injury.
Speaking of avoiding injury, in an effort to reduce my impact on my knees I have been trying to avoid running on concrete. Lately this has meant running on the gravel track around a sports field close to my work. For a change of scenery, on Monday I ran on a paved trail along Barrington Street, but obviously this was not ideal. Today I planned to return to the field, but there was some construction going on very close to it with a bunch of trucks parked right on the track. So instead I decided to walk to the Halifax Common (aka the commons).
Unfortunately when I got there I discovered that the main paths were actually paved, which I had somehow forgotten. Maybe because of this I got thrown off and when I started my first running interval I pressed stop on my watch instead of the lap button (DOH!). I noticed after about 30 or 40 seconds and started the timer again. There were some dirt paths that were ok, so I kind of just meandered on those.
Because the commons is more than a 5 minute walk from my work and I just started my timer once I got across the busy Gottingen Street the warm-up and cool-down walk portions were a bit longer. In the middle it was 7 x 2 min with 1 min recoveries.
Anyway, in the end my knees feel ok. We'll see how they are tomorrow.
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