60 Degrees.

The weather can't seem to make up its mind, but I'll take it. Pretty soon, I'll be doing nothing but complaining about the cold and wind. It made for a decent run today, too. Last week, I completed my scheduled 17 miles. I did alright with my two longer runs (and by "longer" I am talking about a mere 4.5 miles), though Sunday's run was challenging because I didn't eat that much prior to going out. Oops.

I worked out a pseudo schedule for the next 13 weeks, working up to 25 miles. It might seem a bit overly cautious to take 13 weeks to work up to 25, though I think taking my time will be better than jumping ahead of myself. Here's what I'm planning on for the next 4 weeks:

4 4.5 4.5 5	4 4.5 4 5.5	4 4.5 4.5 6	4 4.5 4 6.5
total: 18	total: 18	total: 19	total: 19

I don't know why it skipped down that far. Basically, I'm increasing in .5 to 1 mile increments, and I'm moving around the half miles to get longer distances. I feel that this will help me as I increase the duration of the runs without tiring out, and I'll feel more comfortable running more overall. Eventually, I'll be running 5 days a week, but 4 is working out well for now.

As for today, I pushed the pace a little because I seemed to be feeling it. This isn't really a great thing to do, but I'll run more slowly on Wednesday.

4.06 mi 37.44 09:17 pace

Mile 1 - 9:51:
I'm starting to feel more comfortable running again. During the first two weeks, I felt a little awkward and like I lost my running legs. I'm slowly getting back to where I was, which is a good sign. This is such a great time to be running because the temperature and weather caters to wusses like myself.

Mile 2 - 9:19:
Around here I kind of didn't know why I was running so fast. I didn't feel out of breath, but I figured I should have slowed down. However, since this is my shortest run this week, it worked out better this way.

Mile 3 - 9:07:
I purposely kept this mile above 8 so that I didn't stress myself out too much.

Mile 4 - 8:57:
Overall, this run pleases me. Next time, though, I'm going to try a more formal speed work approach, one that won't be as stressful as running 3 miles at a quick pace. I'm not really looking to do much speed stuff, though I don't want to run everything at the same pace. Maybe I'll throw in a few strides so that I pick the pace up just a bit.

Hope you guys are having a good start to your week.