With the Spooky season upon us, it’s another month of running in the history books. Not that any running records were broken on my account. September featured steady mileage, overseas training, and some large (to me) elevation gain training. Let’s see our review of September and what happened in the average running miles of Paul!

Week 1: 25.3 Miles Total

The month started off with a good pop of distance by topping 25 miles for the 2nd week in a row. I was slowly starting to build up again after shin splint injuries in August. The focus of the week was maintenance for the legs for a good winter racing season finale.

Some highlights this week included making it up the local hill five times that has kicked me down more times than I dare count. I have to bold it out of respect and fear that I have for this hill. I’ve been focused on upping my elevation gain to around 3,000 feet per week and this hill contributes to almost all those feet gained. Getting up that beast five times was pretty tough and I felt every second of my final attempts.

Week 2: 27.2 Miles Total

An ultramarathon distance complete! Over the span of seven days. Does that count as an ultra if it takes you a week to do so? I’ll save those philosophical questions for my long runs.

Week 2 gave me some hope that I would pick back up to the 30 miles per week average and I continued hitting the 3,000 feet of elevation gain for the week. I was pretty happy about hitting a few more miles than the week before without injury and on one run, the sunrise poked out to warm up the day. I haven’t been too disciplined about running in the 5 o’clock hour that I so bravely attempted back in summer time. Luckily my work schedule opened up time for me to run during lunch so I have been able to get some miles in during the day. I would continue to try to commit to running at 5 a.m. but I am an AverageRunnerPaul, not an AboveAverageRunnerPaul. There is only so much discipline in this mind.

Week 3: 25.4 Miles Total

This was one of my favorite weeks of the year from many points of view outside of total miles gained! Between two runs over three days, I hit over 3,000 feet of elevation gain. OOF-DA. With a few more runs during the week, I managed to do one last run to be at 4,006 feet of elevation gain, my largest in a week ever! Additionally, I had one run that I gained 1,639 feet in one go making it the highest gain for the year. It came from getting up that monster of a hill I mentioned earlier a total of six times which was also a record to me.

On top of all that elevation, I got the chance to visit Europe with Janel! She and I went to Prague and Luxembourg City for our first times and running around those two cities was awesome. Technically, I only ran in Prague during my third week of running but we loved every second of it. Our friend Pia from Germany came over to visit the city with us and the celebration beer was a good time too!

Week 4: 15.4 Miles Total

Dun dun dun, what happened to the mileage?? Welp, all I can say is that Europe has really really good food and it feels pretty amazing to sleep in on vacation. I managed to get in a few small runs during the week and running around Luxembourg city was pretty cool too. The weather went from 80 degrees down to the 30s in Luxembourg with constant rain so it made for some mentally tough runs.

I also took a few days off at the end of our trip and traveling back to the US. I’m sure my shins were happy to get a break after all the walking on cobblestones and my waistline definitely enjoyed the trip. Can’t highlight enough all the good pastries and cheese. Probably safer for me to only get access that that every once in awhile rather than the daily urge I wouldn’t be able to resist. Although fried food in the states probably is much worse for me…

Monthly Total: 102.3 miles, 12,240 feet of Elevation

Wowser to the elevation gain!! It was over a quarter of my elevation gain for the year and I had never done so much elevation in a month. My yearly total before this was around 37,000 and this put me right around the 50,000 mark. The most elevation I had ever recorded in a month in the past few years was 11,576 in April of 2020 when Janel and I lived in a mountainous area. There was no choice but to have high elevation gain in that area and most my months were around the 9K mark for elevation gain. Sure puts you in good shape to have that be a consistent part of one’s training!

As for the total mileage, a little lower than planned in the last weeks but I threw in a couple runs at the end of the month to top 100 miles. For the yearly mileage, I passed the 800 mark which is pretty cool for me. The low amount of shin pain puts me in a good spot for October and I will need to focus on doing a long run each week. One hour runs don’t feel too shabby anymore but I need to get to the 1.5 hour mark pretty soon.

The goals for October include: 30 miles per week average, continued 3,000 feet of elevation gain, and a long run each week. I will also begin cross training by lifting (ugh) with my friend Jordan (hurray!) at least once a week. He is a champ in the weightroom with lots of fitness knowledge on correct form and different weight exercises. He’s awesome to be around and I figure it would be good to have an accountability partner for the gym side. It will be my first time lifting in longer than I can remember so wish me luck!

That’s it for me for September running. I’d love to hear how it went for you all! Did September turn out the way you wanted? Any fun runs that really stood out to you this month?