Month 1 in the books

That's my trainer set up this year. Last year I set it up in front of the TV, but then I had to take it down every time and I got tired of that so this year I went with a permanent set up. Right behind the love seat. Right in front of Square Dog.

My first month of "official" training is over and I'd say it went well. I ran about 54 miles, which isn't high miles by any means but it's a big step in the right direction. And I haven't had any pain in my knee in a while. I think it's actually healing.

For the last 5 weeks, I've been running every other day and I'm finally getting my running fitness back. Now that my knee is feeling pretty good, I've decided to step it up a bit. I'm going to keep the pace slow for a while, but now I've decided to start running 2 days in a row followed by one rest day. This will give me a few more miles every week without putting too much stress on my knee.

The funny thing is I think this knee injury has actually been good for me. I was looking at my past training logs and I noticed I've never put in a lot of base miles for running. Every time I start running, I run for about 2 weeks and then start in with intervals and 5K races. It's no surprise I keep getting injured. So now I'm taking it easy and I'm not worried about my pace. Just having fun running and getting in some miles. Tonight I decided March is going to be the month of 30 runs. I'm going to run 30 out of 31 days. This gives me about 6 weeks to build enough of a base to run for a month without injury. It shouldn't be a problem because most of those runs will be at a slow, comfortable pace. But it should really help take my running to the next level because it has now become my weakness (swimming used to be my biggest weakness).

I also finally got around to reading my book on training with a power meter so I'm working on putting some power based workouts together. I'm really anxious to finally put that power meter to use and see what I can do to improve my cycling. Should be fun...and painful. Everything cycling is supposed to be.

Swimming has been going pretty well too. I've been stuck on the same workout for a few weeks now. I'm not sure why I keep doing this one over and over. It's the one where my main set is 3 sets of 450 yards (1/4 mile). Last week I set my fastest time ever, so I'm pumped about that. Tonight, I didn't match that time, but I was faster than I usually am so I think I'm finding a little more speed again. That's encouraging because I've been stuck in a rut for a little while with swimming. Also, all of my workouts have been 2500 yards for quite a while now so I think I might start mixing in some longer workouts of 3000 and 3500 to step things up a bit. Spring is coming. Gotta get in shape.

Month 2 started today, and I'm feeling pretty good these days so I think this is going to be a good month of training.

Sidenote: For those who doubt the power of echinacea, it's the middle of Jan. in Wisconsin and I have yet to have a cold this winter. That's 12 months without a cold. I'm telling ya, it works.