January 2011 Running Recap

January 12 was when I was supposed to be allowed to start running again - 6 weeks after the C-section that resulted in my beautiful baby girl Sophie.  I actually started running January 8, a few days early.  Over the month of January, I had 14 runs or walks.  I pushed it to the last minute to gather up the miles, accumulating almost 20 miles in the last 3 days of the month.  This has been a month of trying to get my pre-pregnancy fitness back!

 

Totals

• 50.13 miles running
• 95 minutes on the elliptical in cross-training (11.5 elliptical miles)

Activities

• Produced the inaugural New Year's Day Half Marathon
• Hosted a San Francisco Marathon Training Kickoff here in DFW on January 29 as one of the race's volunteer ambassadors
• Sought out support to reach my fitness goals - running 9 miles with friends on 1/30 and using Facebook to find a friend to run with 1/31.

 

Progress Towards Fitness Goals
I set my 2011 goals at the start of the year.  I refused to set a year's worth of goals because I hadn't started my recovery yet and had no idea how slow or fast it would be.  So what I set was two goals that once I achieve them I'll have a better sense of my recovery and capabilities that I can set new goals. The two goals:

 

1) Complete a 50-mile month. DONE. I hadn't really expected to be able to do this the first month, but that's why we're going with incremental goals without firm deadlines, so I can explore my fitness recovery properly.

 

2) Finish a half marathon by or on March 27. That date was set because I was already registered for the Dallas Rock N Roll Half on March 27. But since I've been doing pretty well, I signed up for the Austin Half Marathon on February 20th. There are no time goals with this race. I'm just using it as motivation to get those long runs and get my long run base back to 13.1.

 

I look forward to completing this second goal so I can set some more goals. I have some thoughts in my head, but it would be premature to commit now. It's still so early to be back running. 

 

I'm excited to see what's next for me after Austin Half on February 20th!