take what you can get…

I should have learned this lesson by now: the best laid training plans almost never come to fruition. Over the last few weeks I’ve laid out several ambitious training plans that have me flawlessly increasing my mileage from week to week while also increasing my intensity at an equal rate.

Then reality hit. There are works projects. There’s another bar exam waiting for me in February. There are holiday parties. In general, there’s life.

This week my specific reality was polar vortex #15 and a cough that just wouldn’t go away. On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, I fought through the freezing temps and bronchial distress only to allow common sense to prevail and give myself a couple of days off.

Of course, a couple days off means that my mileage goal of 60 miles turned into 40 miles–and that’s where the lesson comes in: you’ve got to take what you can get.

Yesterday, I waited for the double digits to hit and did a tempo run–four miles at six minute pace. Definitely nothing to write home about as I hope to run 20 seconds per mile faster for 22 more miles, but it’s a start.

Today, I ran one of my longer long runs in recent memory–14 miles–at a steady pace–6:45. Again, in a couple of months I’ll hope to run 24 miles at 5:50 pace, but I’ve got to start somewhere.

So for that’s my credo for the next month–take what I can get. I just have to hope that sooner than later the “what I can get” is between 60 and 80 miles. We’ll see…