Month 4 Recap

Hello Strangers! Sorry I've been so MIA for the past few weeks. Yesterday marked the end of my 4th month in working towards my goal of running 1,000 miles by the end of this year! 

See recap below:

As you've read in previous posts, I had quite a bit of knee pain this month. April was tough for me and I got a little behind in my goal due to that (about 16 miles behind). However, I wanted to make sure and cut back enough and rest so that I could properly heal in order to continue on with my goal. 

You can see a gap of zero runs between April 11 and April 17 - talk about torture! I was going crazy not being able to run for a week. 

I completed 64 miles this month compared to 89 in March, 76 in February and 80 in January. 

Last month my average pace per mile was 9:21 min/mile. In March, I said my goal for April would be a 9:15 min/mile. This month, my average pace per mile came out to 10:48 min/mile. FAIL! I definitely contribute this to the knee pain. There were times were it hurt to run at all, even slowly, so my times were sacrificed. Not the biggest issue in the world, but needless to say, my goal was not met. 

I ended up purchasing a knee brace towards the end of April, and as you can see from the spreadsheet, it helped tremendously in getting back to my normal times. It's amazing what a difference it made. However, I still do not want to push myself too hard or run long distances yet.

Speaking of not running long distances, I have my 2nd Half Marathon coming up this Sunday in Pittsburgh. I'm excited for it, but a little weary of my knee. I haven't run anything over 6.5 miles in the past month, so we'll see how it holds up with 13. I would like to say my goal is to break my 1st half marathon time of 1:57:29 and end up somewhere closer to 1:55:00, but I'm not too focused on that right now...I just want to finish and not have to call Jon and tell him my knee gave out and to come get me! I think I will be fine with my knee brace. I have had little to no pain when using it. 

Thanks again for all of the support and hopefully I'll be able to get back on track in May and catch up without injuring myself again. 

5/1/2013: Miles run - 309 of 1000. Miles remaining - 691 of 1000