With the heating getting into the 100s, Texas summertime had officially begun! And with the end of July, that wrapped up a month of running. Let’s dive into the data and see what happened.

June ended with a string of over 30 miles of running per week with the highest monthly total in a long time. My mind loved it! My shins did not. Turns out that the aggressive increase was more than my 30 year old body could handle. As much as I thought I was young and spry, my shins thought otherwise. Hence it was time to do the smart thing and reduce the mileage down. I did keep up the same amount of fried food, beer, and chip consumption which did lead to a few more pounds on the belly. You can’t win them all I guess!

Week 1: The Decrease – 20 miles total

I began on July 3rd with a 7 mile run. I had been battling some shin pain towards the end of June and I thought taking a couple days off would give me some recovery. It seemed to help a little bit but the pain remained. I figured it was time to break my 30+ mile streak and drop down to a more manageable number. In December, I developed a stress fracture and unwisely pushed past it to lose quite a few weeks of running because of the injury. Not an ideal build up for a marathon and I paid for it dearly. Luckily, I learned my lesson!

The rest of the week saw four miles runs at a much easier pace. My shin pain didn’t get any worse so I figured that was a victory! I was itching to do more mileage though so I decided to push for some more miles and elevation into week 2.

Week 2: Elevation training has begun! – 23.1 miles total

I don’t often make wise decisions in my running training. One example is making this unwise decision here. In the spring time, I boldly stated that I would like to locally climb the height of Mount Everest in this post here:

How Hard is it to run up Mount Everest? Planning it the Local Way

Now, I do not have the background or talent to suggest this as a possibility but I had already thrown the gauntlet down. It was time to get in some elevation training! This led to my favorite run of the month which was a two hour segment of running a loop around a local hill. I covered just over 11 miles and after, my shins felt the pain. I would need to hold off on hill training and running all together and get to the exercise bike.

On the bright side, it was almost 1500 feet of climbing which would have been getting to the top of a local mountain in the area we used to live. My legs will have to get used to that muscle group again.

Week 3: 8.3 miles, single digits baby!

This was a pretty low week on my end from where I had been at a month ago or even a couple weeks ago. My shins ached in bed and I began the bike grind to maintain fitness. I did a few runs on grassy surfaces to rest my legs and spent the rest of the time on an exercise bike in my garage.

The silver lining, I had a homebuilt sauna to enjoy! By sauna, Janel and I have a one car garage that gets steamy in Texas heat. That meant that the bike training would be a hot workout every time. On the plus side, it was fun to see myself lose around 3 to 4 lbs of water weight each workout! I always weighed myself at the end before I chowed down breakfast and coffee to make myself feel better. I’m sure I gained all that weight back a couple hours later.

During this week, I probably did at least four bike workouts that just included biking hard for 30 minutes to one hour. I listened to an audiobook called “Bravey” by Alexi Pappas. She is a Greek-American who ran in the 2016 Olympics and is also a film maker. Interesting story about her life and it distracted me from just looking at the garage door the entire time.

Week 4: 17.1 miles, building back up!

The break certainly helped my shins and I was grateful for that! I skipped back to back running days and would add some bike time in the evening to get in extra cardio. Janel and I signed up for another go in Irving for a half marathon/marathon attempt so that will be the end of year goal! It should get me into good shape to try and chase a mile PR as well as get my original marathon goal time in March of running under 3:30. Both of these will be a long shot and that’s the fun part of setting an aggressive goal. You never know what may happen.

I tried to also supplement some lifting as another training support. I did about five minutes in the gym before I went back to the bike. I just don’t get that excited about weights unless it’s looking forward to the weight I can consume in pizza.

Monthly Total: 77 miles

I capped off the final days of July with 8.5 miles of running which was more than my week 3 total. I definitely took the foot off the gas. Overall, my shins are feeling a bit better with just a little nagging pain continuing. I’ll try to run through it and be proactive with ice and stretching. I would like to get back to 100+ mile months and just have to listen to the body.

On the bright side of the month, I covered about 4,000 feet more of elevation than the month before! So I did put in the Everest baseline work. There is a monster hill near where I work that I can now put some time in a couple times a week on my lunch break. You gain about 250 feet in half a mile of running which in Texas, you don’t often see that vertical gain.

I hope you all had an excellent July and the month went the way you wanted! I’d love to hear how it was and if it didn’t go your way, let’s look forward to a great August!