On short-term goals

I met my goal for the week by getting in a second, longer run today. I did 5 miles on the treadmill, and, uncharacteristically for me, took note of the average pace. I varied my time on each mile:

Mile 1: 10 minutes (warm-up)

Mile 2: 9:30 pace

Mile 3: 9:22 pace

Mile 4-4.25: 9:30 pace

Mile 4.25-5: 9:30 to 10:00 pace (cool-down)

Overall I averaged 9:41/mile, which is a good bit slower than my goal race pace of 9:10/mile. I'm sort of OK with it today because I am just coming back from time off, because it felt very easy, and because it included my slower warm-up mile. But, it got me to thinking about short-term goals.

I originally aimed for 100 miles by the end of February. I am going to adjust that goal to 80-85 miles to account for the time I took off. I am also going to try to improve my pace. By the end of February I'd like to be averaging 9:22 for long runs. I think this is imminently manageable given where I'm at right now and the fact that my long runs won't increase in distance very much before then.

My last half-marathon mile pace was 9:37. It seems reasonable that if I can work on pace this early in the season, I should be able to set a new PR when I race this spring/summer. I want that sub-two hour half.

Mileage: 32.9 + 5.0 = 37.9