Halfway Through August

Since we are halfway through August, I thought I'd give another little graphical analysis of my training mileage.  See my end of July post for my first Excel analysis.

Here's a graph showing mileage for May through 8/15 this year and in 2010.

I know it's not always good to compare myself to the shape I was in previously, especially 3 whole years ago, but I figure that is at least a good baseline.  I don't know how to show the quality of miles in an Excel graph, but I know it's been better this year than in 2010, so you'll just have to take my word for it.  I've been glad to actually get in some speed training this summer!  Here's a picture from the UDXC camping trip in August of 2010.  We were playing freeze dance :)

As far as August mileage, I'm at about 62 miles for half of the month.  This included more days than planned as off days last week, so I'm hoping the 2nd half of this month and the first half of September will really be much higher mileage with less days off per week!  I think I should be able to get close to 150 for the month which I'd be happy with.

Another way I can tell that I am in much better shape is how I felt after my runs Wednesday and yesterday.  I did 5 miles Wednesday at a more tempo-ish pace and felt surprisingly good and strong during it.  Yesterday morning, I woke up and did 2 miles easy and then some foam rolling before starting my morning.  I did this because I knew I would be a little sore from the faster run and thought it'd be a good way to just get stretched out in the morning, especially because it was a little cooler outside.

Then in the evening, I did 5 miles normal and felt awesome.  I didn't bring a watch with me because I didn't want to worry about my pace, but if I had to guess I would think I was going 7:45-8:00 pace.  When I finished, I felt happy with the fact that I felt like it was a great normal run without worrying about pace, just listening to my music, and running finally didn't feel like a chore that I just had to get done.  It's been feeling like that a lot recently because I just can never seem to really feel good while running, but last night was different.

And here's a picture from earlier this week when my mom and I went out for sushi.  I had just gotten my hair cut and dyed a wee bit blonder.

How is your August going?

Do you ever feel like working out is just a chore instead of fun?