76 miles

Over the last 7 days I have covered 76 miles on my feet.

Normally I wouldn't be so psyched about such an arbitrarily random number, but I haven't run this much in a week's time since 2001. I feel like my friends Jake, Pat Reaves or Ben right now with this much mileage! I'm actually surprised I've held up this well at all.

When I used to just run, I guess the most I ever ran was 85 per week. I was pretty consistent at that number, and it was always on 6 days and usually included 2 morning runs during the week. This time around it was 7 days/7 runs and included 40 miles in Patapsco and 4 runs that I would classify as "very hilly".

I have another 9 miles on tap for tomorrow, before taking Thursday as a no-run day, and then a couple short, easy runs on Friday/Saturday, leading up to Sunday's Miami Half Marathon. I'm quite looking forward to this escape, albeit brief, from the world up here.

As I was explaining to Kip, who has accompanied me for 32 of these miles, I'm trying a different approach to the tri season this year. I feel like my riding has gotten pretty good and I have a solid formula for success. I feel good about my swimming. My running, however, has been fairly stagnant. I needed a breakthrough, and the only way I was going to accomplish that was if I took this month with a little lighter swim/ride schedule and a big run one. So far so good.