Time continues to fly by and we are in the third month of 2018! Now is the perfect time for me to look back on February and share my March running goals!
It’s been a weird winter on the East coast, hasn’t it? March has already come in like a lion and I’m currently dreading another major storm today as we’re expected to get up to 6 inches of snow. The groundhog was right after all…we just had to wait a little longer for the snow to come back! Still, I really can’t complain…we’ve got a couple weeks of winter left!
February is the shortest month of the year, but it certainly kept me busy. While I did miss a 16-mile run, I was still able to clock in over 98 miles in February, my highest mileage since September. Marathon training has been challenging but I’m still hanging in there! As a reminder, these were my goals for the past month:
Create a meal planning routine.Grade: F. Once again, I failed this goal. I didn’t even attempt to meal plan in the month of February. I honestly forgot that this was one of my goals…terrible!
Get to the bottom of my knee and shoulder pain.Grade: C. I still don’t know what the root cause of my knee and shoulder pain is, but at least I’m doing something about it. I’m using KT Tape and doing my exercises and stretches more consistently. I’m taking fewer barre classes and lowering the intensity whenever I can. And I’m working on my posture. Unfortunately getting to a doctor requires a lot of hoops to jump…hopefully I can try to get an appointment with primary care on one of my off days.
Run a long run with a friend. Grade: B. While I didn’t get to run a long run with a companion in the month of February, I did get to run with one of my old running buddies on my Tuesday tempo run days! The last time we ran together was 5 miles and it was a great workout! Tom and I used to run together all the time when I first started my running club at work. He’s now training for the Broad Street Run in May so it was great to get back out there, especially with such mild weather! Hopefully I can find more people to run with for the double digit miles – Bret really did me a solid joining me for 15 last week!
Write in my Training Journal immediately post-workout: I’m a big fan of using a running journal, as I’ve mentioned in my review of the Believe Training Journal. But I will runfess that sometimes my journal entries are a delayed by a day or two, and then I forget the details of my runs. For example, sometimes I’ll feel a bit of soreness during the run, but then I’ll forget to write it down. The best way of avoiding that is to make sure it’s the first thing I do after a run or a class!
Minimize stress and improve time management: The stress has been pretty high over the past month in my personal and professional life. Of course, losing my mother continues to shape my behavior and priorities. But work has been extremely busy, marathon training is time-consuming, and I’m less than 8 months away from my wedding with a LOT of decisions left to make! In addition to that, I haven’t been able to blog as much as I intended because of my bigger priorities. I’m hoping that in March I can gain better control of my time, get enough rest, and stop feeling so overwhelmed all the time!
Perform daily injury prevention activities: I’m really taking these aches and pains that I’ve acquired over the past month seriously, and I’m doing anything that I can to prevent a serious injury. I’m rolling, I’m stretching, really focusing on the little things, so every day I want to make sure I’m doing something that will help me out in the long run. If you have any suggestions on good, quick routines, send them my way!
How did you do in the month of February? What are your running goals for March?
