A month or two after our third child was born on August 1, 2010, I was depressed that I had been unable to sustain an exercise regime for nearly four years (since our first child was born in September, 2006). I decided that I wanted to set a goal that was imminently attainable and sustainable. At the time, running once a week seemed to fit the bill. I could still run three miles, although it was a slog, so I decided that running 100 miles before the end of 2011 would be my goal. It wasn’t ambitious, but that was the point. I started immediately, running 2.84 miles in 31:28 on November 23, 2010.

I kept up those weekly runs for months, only missing two due to an unfortunate sequence of events that caused me to miss two different runs in May 2010.¹ By that point, though, it was clear that I was going to shatter my original goal, especially when I started running twice a week sometimes during the summer.

So, at some point this summer I came up with a new goal: Each calendar month, I’d run further than I had in the previous month. The goal was inspired by RunKeeper, where I’d been tracking my runs, which notifies you when you set a new monthly distance record. To keep from blasting myself a new unattainable goal though, I’ve sought to increase my record by only one mile each month. In October, I ran 26.3 miles², and in November, I’ll strive for 27. I’m enjoying it, and I wanted to make a few notes on running.

• On my strategy for hitting my monthly goal: At the beginning of each month, I schedule my runs. I count how many I’ve scheduled, subtract one, and compute how far I need to run each outing. I subtract one so that I always have a backup run. My idea was that if I missed a run, I’d know that I already had an extra scheduled. In practice, the result has often been a day off at the end of the month.

• On weather: I hate the cold. So, I mostly stuck to the treadmill last winter, although I figured out at some point that I was comfortable down to 50℉ in my usual garb. I’ve already determined this fall that with a long sleeve shirt and a fleece headband, I can push it down to 40℉ with no problems. I think that’s as far as I’ll take it this year, but it should still get me outside more often, especially in the Fall and early Spring.

• On racing: I intended to run one or two 5k races this summer, but never got around to it. Oh well. When I first moved to Blacksburg in 2003, I was training for a marathon. I made it pretty far in my training—I think my long run was about 16 miles—when a combination of work, lack of an indoor training facility (non-treadmill), and minor injuries caused me to decide to quit. I’m not sure that I have the marathon bug any more, but I’m already starting to look out 2–3 years into the future and think about a half marathon. I think I’ll be easily up to a 10k next summer, if I can find a good one.

• On speed: While I was on the treadmill last year, I was turning in sub-10-minute miles, and I was pretty proud of myself. When I got outside last Spring, though, I found that I was much slower, with a pace of nearly 11-minutes-per-mile.³ As recently as late September, that was still my pace. But suddenly this month my pace has improved dramatically. My last run was 3.39 miles at 8:55 per mile. I have absolutely no idea how or why I have suddenly gotten so much faster. It’s pretty nice, though!⁴