44F. 15 @ 6:25 AP. Big breakthrough today. It's been a long, long time since I've been able to write that.
Original plan was just to average 7:00 for this run (~50k effort?) but in the back of my mind, I knew I'd probably test myself a bit more. Ran mile 1 in 7:04, which is undoubtedly a mile-1-early-AM PR. Then the next 14 were 6:42, 6:45, 6:41, 6:50, 6:30, 6:25, 6:27, 6:25, 6:23, 5:58, 6:12, 6:02, 6:07, 5:44.
To put it in perspective, the last 13.1 miles today works out to a low 1:23, maybe 30 seconds off my PR. Averaged 6:10 for the last 10 miles, ran sub-38 for the last 10k, and averaged 6:01 for the last 5. Now I just need to hope for a full recovery in 9 days...the angel on my shoulder was telling me to slow down and this was unnecessary, but the devil on the other shoulder needed to see what I could do (he won).
Anyway, good segue into my last chart of the year. In the past, I'd looked at each month in a vacuum and gotten discouraged when I cratered a month of training. But I think our fitness is more about what we've done in the past year, not in the past month (today's run solidified that for me). So I'm looking at my training volume now, using the trailing 12-months' weekly average (red line) instead of looking at each month separately (dotted blue line). It certainly explains my lack of improvement in the last couple marathons (Apr-14 and Jan-15), and why the Jan-15 race was a little better.
Anyway, I've planned out the next year with yearly volume in mind, instead of hitting weekly goals, which don't always make sense. Goal is to move the red line to 70 by the end of the year. Motivation right now is 10/10, and it hasn't been there in years. Looking forward to a great 2016, happy new year all!
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