Two months down in my challenge and the continued experience of successes and challenges definitely continued. I find that February is the most challenging month of all due to there being less days to achieve set goals (28 days vs 30/11 days does make a big difference in the overall scheme of things). The way that the month fell I knew that at a maximum I had only 20 set running days, if I kept my usual routine of 53km a week, this would mean a maximum possible of 212km for the month which is just over the amount of 209km I need to run to keep on track. I needed to have a month with no complications… of well that didn’t happen.
In the second week of the challenge I hit the first hurdle, starting my run on the Thursday morning, I felt quite tight through my lower legs and my right ankle was quite stiff. I made the decision to pull out of my run. While thinking about the big picture is important, I knew that the repercussions were now I’d be sitting beneath the amount I needed to stay on track unless I pulled out some larger numbers later in the month.
Week three presented its own challenges. I was excited with some progress made, on the Wednesday I set a new PB over the distances of a kilometre, half mile and mile when I was doing my regular short run of just over 5km. This was followed by a great change of scenery run down in the Safety Bay / Shoalwater area along the coast. If anyone get the chance to do that, I would highly recommend it, lovely scenery and nice and flat. I thought that I was make good progress, however another hitch to the routine the following day. I ended up needing to visit the emergency room overnight and got zero sleep which resulted in another missed run on that Friday morning. That brought me to being down by 24km for the month going into the final week.
Not to be disheartened, I thought I would at least push to try and hit the 200km for the month by the end of Week 4. It would mean needing to run further than I would normally to get in the necessary distance. The week started with my usual routine and I completed 2 x 12.2km runs – this put me in the position of needing 39km from the last three days which I felt was manageable. Wednesday was the start of the increase, instead of my usual 5km run, I completed a 10.8km run. While this put me further behind (29km in two days) I still felt I could give things a good crack. On Thursday I increased the distance from my usual and completed 13.km which took me down to needing 15.2km on the final day.
Friday the 28th of February, the final day. I knew that I was falling short of the 209km needed for the month, however was still optimistic for completing my 200km for the month challenge – there was the added challenge of having a head cold and my head feeling pretty lousy. The run started at Lake Monger and I kept the usual route of then linking over the Herdsman Lake. As a got back to Lake Monger I brought up the 13km, as expected, from the circuit. Only 2.2km to go. I continued around Lake Monger to bring up the 14km before turning around and heading back by the same route to where I was parked. Upon completion brining up the 15.3km and ticking over the 200km for the month.
Where does this leave me in relation to the larger challenges?
The three month January – March Challenge I am currently sitting at 413.4km of the needed 625km meaning I have only 211.6km to do in March. I feel pretty good about this one! If I hit this target by the end of March then I will be on track for the larger goal of 2500km for the year, a quarter of the year will be down and I’ll have covered a quarter of the distance.
My statistics for February were as follows:
Total | 200.1km |
Runs completed | 18 runs |
Average Pace | 5’33” |
Total time | 18:31:09 |
Looking forward to March and hitting a few of the medium sized goals that I had set for the year!