Running from November; Swimming to December

November was a great running month for me @ 104 miles, my highest ever run volume month and 2nd 100+ mile month ever.

This was also a huge confidence boosting month. After my foot injury at the end of August and all through September, my running confidence broke. I dreaded rebuilding my way back.

Well, I did it by following the 10% rule and stayed injury free. It took a solid 6 weeks, but it worked and I am ready to knock a 10K literally out of the park (Central Park) this weekend.

What helped was I am running 5 times a week and keeping the long runs down. My longest run since August 22nd was a 10 miler done only this past weekend. Frequency, I have found, has been paying bigger dividends than shear volume. I added a speed workout on the track once a week for some variety.

December will be a swimming month. I am taking two swim workshops that will go into January. One will be with my coach, the other with a tri club over in Greenwich, CT. The cool thing about the tri club workshop is that we will do a 500 yard TT the first week, then repeat it the last week to show if we progressed, and if so, by how much.

Today I did one for practice with my super swimming buddy, Bob, who back in the day once went 4:50 for the 500 @ a meet. He gave me a good strategy for the 500: Cruise the first 200, build the middle 100, then gun it for the last 200.

I did just that today and wound up with a 7:38 for a just-under 1:32 pace. Considering I went a 8:47 18 months ago, I am going to take this as a HUGE improvement considering I am not in the best swimming shape right now.

Looking forward to the swim workshops ahead and hopefully I can get my long distance pace down.