It’s been a long, long time coming. In a season marked by many “first time hitting X since [some Before-COVID time frame]”, I practically stumbled upon one I honestly didn’t expect to hit for at least a few more months: the 100-mile month.
I hadn’t exceeded 100 miles in running in a single month since April 2020.
(this time I posted the code for generating this figure here)
It’s an entirely arbitrary milestone: an arbitrary distance within an arbitrary time period (made all the more interesting that both April and September are months with “only” 30 days), but it speaks to a much broader trend over the past 6+ months: I’m finally hitting a stride.
Pretty much since COVID, my running has more or less looked like the middle part of that graph: a month, maybe two, of increased mileage, followed immediately by a sharp fall-off back to practically 0. Wash, rinse , repeat at least half a dozen times over a 2+ year period. I’d been hoping the training for Ath Half 2022 in September-October of that year would hold, seeing as it marked three consecutive months of decent mileage. But this was followed by a November, December, and January that saw practically no mileage at all (I was severely, severely burned out those months).
But February 2023 saw a change as I started training in earnest for the Savannah Women’s Half, but where I could have followed the same pattern following the race and stopped running for a month (or two, or three), I… didn’t. It coincided with the time where The Lady and I finally signed up for a not-UGA gym and began lifting regularly in earnest, which helped cement a workout routine that slowly included running. There was a small dip in mileage in the subsequent months of May and June, but well above the nominal baseline.
Then in August, I broke 80 miles for the first time since something-2020, followed the very next month by my first 100-mile month in over three years.
It’s so, so exciting and relieving to know that I can still do this! I can dive into tougher workouts and longer runs and not only survive them but finish feeling good! It’s such a far cry from just 8 months ago, when even short runs felt absolutely agonizing, where each and every run was marked by the first 10-15 minutes being nearly impossible to draw a breath. Long COVID is still very much a thing for me and has probably drawn out this comeback by at least a few months, to say nothing of the psychological effects as they pertain to simple confidence in my abilities, but just the added complication of new symptoms I’ve never had to deal with before has made everything all the more difficult.
As an aside: I really get why people who are starting out running have such a hard time sticking with it. I came to running from a place of privilege, where I was always in decent shape coming from some sport or another, and so could just jump into runs of 9-minute/mile pace without blinking. Even now, 9 minutes per mile is a tough pace for me; I tend to gravitate toward 10 minutes per mile, or even 10:30, for an “easy” pace. No injury or sickness has ever set me back further than COVID and its long-term effects has, and there are a lot of folks in the running community who just don’t get that. I certainly didn’t. I sympathized with new runners, but didn’t empathize. It’s more than a little demoralizing to hear fast runners talk a big game about “not leaving anyone behind” but then apparently find it absolutely impossible to run slower than 9 minutes/mile.
(there was also a fast runner recently who said they “don’t consider myself a fast runner”… my sibling in Christ, you run half marathons in 1:15 and change, you’re a fast runner)
It’s been because of folks who are willing to slow down that I’ve found a running crew, folks who inspire me to get out of bed despite everything else swirling around, to get the big mileage in. This past weekend saw a 12-mile training run, and I couldn’t have done it without this group.
My point here is not to drive a wedge between fast runners and slow runners. My point is that I understand a lot better than I used to why it is that runners who are slower, runners who are just starting out, or runners who’ve had a major setback, may find the grind to “keep up” so imposing and intimidating that they just… give up. It’s taken me 6+ months of very, very regular training–prioritizing my training over work, over sleep (though also prioritizing sleep)–just to start feeling normal. Six months, to reach a point where I feel like I’m just barely able to see where I actually want to go. As in, I’m still not anywhere close, but at least I’m starting to feel it. Of course I understand wanting to call it quits after a month, or two months, or three months. That happened after Ath Half 2022, and again after Savannah Women’s Half 2023: in both cases, I trained pretty hard for somewhere in the 1-2 month range, and the end result was my two SLOWEST half marathon times, separated by 1 minute.
Yeah. Giving up sounded awfully easy.
But just this past weekend, I ran 12 miles. And not just 12 miles, but 12 miles in 2 hours and 4 minutes. Tack on another 1.1 miles to make it a half marathon, and that’s probably a 15-minute improvement over Savannah Women’s Half.
And yet, it would still be my 3rd slowest half marathon on record, after Ath Half 2022 and Savannah 2023.
It’s a deep mental bowl with smooth, steep sides that make for a very difficult climb out. Hitting 100 miles in a month makes it a lot easier to see just how far I’ve climbed; I just wish it was easier in the moment or with less substantial milestones. Because every run–no matter the pace, no matter the distance, no matter the time–is meaningful and important and a milestone on its own.
Do I miss cranking out 8-mile tempo runs with an average 6:45 min/mi tempo pace? Yeah, of course I do. Have the memories of those runs poisoned my comeback efforts, made me more impatient with myself at times, and caused me to occasionally give up? Oh yeah. Would I, even now, sell a part of my soul to bang out 1600+ miles per year again (I might get half that this year. maybe.)? Honestly, probably. It’s not like this milestone magically fixed everything: we runners are world experts at moving the goalposts so that we’re never, ever fully satisfied with our performances at any given time. Which of course means that, even if any of the previous things did end up being true again at some point, I’d still be unsatisfied with something.
But if there’s anything I’ve learned and really tried to put intentionally put into practice over the past 9 months, it’s to honest-to-God celebrate the milestones. 100 miles in a month is my Big Fing Deal right now, and I’m proud of it, full stop. And tied with that lesson in importance is this one: find your running crew. With friends, the miles are always easier, and celebrating the milestones is always more fun 🙂
Where are the pancakes? 