Running Streak: Day 38

Got in a long run of a little over 10 miles tonight.

I've signed up for run coach to help me get ready for Big Sur. I'm also a premium member on Strava, which means I get coaching through a McMillan plan, but I have some issues with McMillan. Among them, it doesn't allow me to pick specific days for rest, long run, cross training, etc. and it also only lets me set one goal race.

With run coach I can tell it the other races I'm running, and it will add them into the training calendar and adjust around them. I prefer this because while I am training for Big Sur I will also be planning to run the Eastern States, so I'd like to be able to have a good showing at both.

I don't like the fact that I can't integrate Strava with run coach, as it would be much easier to have the workouts automatically upload to my training calendar, but I will live with that. I also don't like being unable to change the first day of the week to Monday from Sunday. That is a fairly cosmetic problem, but it still irritates me. That should be a fairly easy level of customization for anything involving a calendar to achieve.

So yeah, that's the choice I've made for my training plan. It has me starting averaging around 30 miles a week, which should be fairly easy on me because I'm used to running between 25-28 miles a week, and building up to 46 miles. The big change is the addition of speed work (fartleks, strides, tempo) and a real long run again. I've missed the long run, and so far the weather in New England has held out well so I should be able to handle those kinds of distances. If we end up getting slammed in February again with blizzards, I may have to get creative to cover the miles, but I will tough it out and do my best. Big Sur is going to require a lot of hill climbing, so I will probably try to pick some routes where I can work in hill repeats, as well...

I'm in need of a new pair of Vibrams. I've been running in old pairs that had a couple of miles left, but I'm reaching the end of that barrel. I'll be ordering a new pair soon, and hopefully remembering to return the pairs I've been meaning to send back for awhile now. Can't order new ones until I do that...