My December Runathon Experiment

Each year the Tucson Tri Girls hold the December Runathon. For each day in December, participants are to run a minimum of 2 miles. Now 2 miles sounds like nothing, but when you're doing it everday in addition to your other runs and bike rides, it can become difficult to schedule sometimes. I did this challenge back in 2008 and successfully completed it. Since I have no training plan that I'm married to this year, I decided to do the December Runathon again this year.

Last time I set some goals, so I think I'll do that again for this year.

2010 December Runathon Goals:

1. Run everyday in December, a minimum of 2 miles each run. The most important goal!
2. Do a trail run at least once a week. Gotta mix it up and hit the trails in addition to the roads.
3. Egg Nog Jog 5K faster than 2008's. Beat last year's time of 26:19 (8:25 min/mile average).
4. Run to the summit of Agua Caliente Hill and back. The trailhead to this hill is 2 miles from my house. I can see the summit right now out my office window as I type this. But I've never reached the summit. This year I'm going to do it as a long run and get to the top where the summit marker is (9.25 miles round trip).

Back when I did the 2008 December Runathon, I did the Egg Nog Jog 5K on 1/1/2009 and ran my fastest 5K ever. I figured it was because of the Runathon. Or was it? The only way to find out is to do an experiment. This year I plan to do a 5K time trial before and after the December Runathon to see what happens. For my pre-Runathon time trial, I chose the Gladden Farms 10K race, which I did this morning. Both this race and the Egg Nog Jog are in the Marana area, and are similar in terms of hills. Shari and I ran the 10K this morning, and I pushed it on the first 5K to get my TT time, then cruised for the second 5K to wrap up the race.

Pre-Runathon 5K time = 27:08 (8:45 min/mile average)

So now it is saved in the blog. We'll see what happens in a month! I'll try to keep updating my blog on a regular basis with how the Runathon (and other workouts) are going.