After this first post where I started a monthly series, in which I‘ll write about my journey to my first 100k mountain race, this is my training update for February.
After a stormy and rainy January where I spend some days skiing instead of running, I expected to get my running mojo back in February and increase my training volume. But then I made a stupid mistake right at the beginning of the month.
I visited a soccer game of our local team and as optimistic as I am, I put almost spring clothes on. I should have checked the weather forecast before because it was freezing that day. So I was sitting two hours in a dead cold stadium crashing my immune system. The next day I woke up with a proper cold which stopped me from running for about a week.
So I learned the hard way that winter isn’t quite over yet. As much as I love running in spring, summer and fall, also winter comes up with some nice views around my trails. I live at about 300m (1000ft) above sea level where we rarely have snow. But when running on the local hills, February gave me a nice snowy surface to run on.
Check out these impressions from this last month of running:
Except the week I lost due to a cold and another tough training week with temperatures below -10° C (15° F) the training was fairly decent. I summed up about 200km (125mi) and 6,000m (18,000ft) of elevation gain. I didn’t do too structured training in February but rather tried to get my body used to move on a hilly terrain and on more technical trails.
So February didn’t go too well but still I was able to maintain my fitness level and finish the month strong with a 75k week. As you might have noticed I was mentioning weather quite a lot here. This winter, and February in special, showed an unusual low amount of sunshine. Most of the days it was grey, wet and cold which doesn’t help my motivation too much.
So now I’m looking forward to March which hopefully brings spring a bit closer. I’ll try to get back into regular interval training. Until my first race of the year at the end of April, I’ll keep the focus on increasing my fitness and speed. Another focus will be building a good base for higher training volume by strength training, losing some kilos and establish a healthier diet.
So this was my short February training update. How was your February running wise? Did you meet your goals or stuck in the winter slump?
Happy running,
mikula
MOTIVATION
HEALTHY RUNNING
IMPROVE & ACHIEVE