The month that almost wasn’t

I started this month with a reasonable non-running goal — a core streak. In simple terms, it meant doing some sort of exercise every day besides running that engaged the core.

Making the best out of the only snow I'll see this winter.

Then I got sick. I missed a day of work. I somehow didn’t throw up. Through a couple of days of not feeling good, I still managed to do a little bit of core work. One day was push-ups and another day was a simple minute-long plank.

Miraculously, though, my illness went away. I ended up having a solid 12-mile run that week, with 25.4 running miles total.

That was the first half of the month.

The second half of the month has gone well — I ran beyond the Shamrock Half distance, which was also one of my fastest long runs ever; I hit 109.4 total running miles; and the core streak continued with lots of sit-ups on the Bosu ball, crunches, planks, and hitting new marks with the 100 push-ups program.

My only disappointment is not getting on my bike yet. Despite decent February, the weekends have been awful with lots of rain and a random snowstorm. The lack of daylight in the mornings and night aren’t idea for riding either. And now that Shamrock is less than 3 weeks away, I’ll probably wait until after then to hop back on the bike.

As I look ahead to March, all eyes are on Sunday, March 18 and my 5th Shamrock Half. My goal of sub 1:40 still gives me a weird feeling, but with my increased speed on hills around Bedford and Roanoke, I’m confident that I’ll be able to knock nearly 3 minutes off my PR that day.

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Tagged as: 100 push-ups, core streak, health, long runs, reflection, Shamrock Half, weather

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