My friend Kaci, left, and I living our best sloth lives this month.

Boy, December, you are always a hot mess. Kudos to every runner out there who stuck with any semblance of a plan this month. At the beginning of December we went on a mini family vacation which actually was a good running week but the start of a three-week sick phase. It started off as a head cold and turned into a sinus infection — and today, Dec. 31, is my last day of antibiotics so WAHOO! It sucked, because I was really finding my feet again with training and then got walloped by being sick. And then throw in the holidays … The holidays are tough for all of us, for all sorts of reasons. Even if you don’t think you have family drama, you’ve probably got some sort of family thing that makes you stressed out. It’s the time when we all feel vulnerable about whatever parts of our life aren’t “perfect.” Add to that travel and weird schedules and weird meals and everything is just so much harder. I always think, oh, I’ve got some extra time off, running will be so easy over the holidays … and then it’s not any kind of easy. 

It was unusually warm all month. I ran in shorts A LOT.

Anyway. I feel like I’m heading into 2019 with a nice starter base — a base for my base? Before I started working with coach Matt, I had very clear-cut training blocks. As in, 16 weeks from a marathon I would pick up a book and start following a plan (it was predominately from Pfitz’s Advanced Marathoning). Between those blocks I would just run easy for fun. Now, I average a higher weekly mileage all year and typically still do speedwork twice a week most weeks. (We back off after big races, obviously.) This is to say I now consider 50 miles per week to be the minimum of actually “training” and I’m just about back there. 

Here’s a December recap, with a 2018 recap and 2019 race plan to follow. Have a happy new year!

  • Miles run: 172 miles (Dec. 1-31)
  • Time spent running: 22.5 hours
  • Longest run: 12 miles
  • Treadmill miles: 50
  • Pilates and yoga: 9.5 hours
  • 34 hours of fitness
  • 1 race this month — Otter Creek Trail 8 miler, 3rd female

 Weekly totals:

  • 33 (Nov. 26-Dec. 2)
  • 40
  • 37.2
  • 34 (took two days off that week because I was sick 😞 )
  • 44 (through Dec. 30)
  •  YTD goal progress: 86% (2,584 of 3,000) 
  • December 2017: 223 miles run 
  • December 2016: 228 miles run