Sweet and not so 'sweet'

Thursday was a perfect day for a run as the weather has finally moderated a bit. The temperatures this week have been close to or just above the freezing point on most days with a substantial warming from morning to afternoon. It made it all the way to +5C on this day and I nearly broke out the shorts but had forgot to pack them.
A day later... and not so perfect. A view from the historic blockhouse in St. Andrews looking towards the town wharf. Today it was just around the freezing point all day with white 'rain' falling gently and melting on impact for the most part. Eventually the temperature dropped and we got a bit of accumulation.
Running this week has been more on track and will be giving myself an 8 out of 10 for workouts completed vs the actual plan. I did everything as scheduled except for missing a 4 mile recovery run and not being able to hit my paces during the interval workout on Tues. I got bonus points for some extra repeat hills on my medium long run and for maintaining the regimen of stretching and Trigger Point self massage. Total of 63 miles in 6 runs and now at 777 miles YTD ( a nice lucky number).

Sunday - 18 miles in 2:39, sore tight legs, breaking in new shoes reserved for the big day

Monday - rest, feeling ok

Tues - slept in and skipped 4mi pre work run (sleep was deemed better training than running). Then ran 6 easy miles at lunchtime and felt almost good with no leg issues.

Weds - 11 miles with 6x1200m in 5:10 to 5:40 on the roads. The goal was closer to 5:00 but the hills, wind and tight hams conspired to make it less. Overall it was a good tough run but felt a little unpleasantly tired afterwards.

Thurs - the glorious sun and warm temps as shown above. Ran a slightly up-tempo pace 9 miles including 6 with a co-worker. I was trying to take it easy but the pace crept up a bit as we jabbered away. If you can still talk while running up hills it must be slow enough, right?

Friday - 14 miles in 2:00 (see snow scene above) nice and easy, feeling decent and being very gentle on the legs while listening to some good music and podcasts. Finished off with 3 x 0.5 mile downhill repeats at marathon pace on the Bunny Hill to begin to remind the legs of the downhill punishment that will be coming soon. Log says 'Decent run for a change!'

Sat- very very easy 5 mile loop around town feeling stiff around the hip joints

I keep looking at my training numbers over the past few years and was trying to find some 'predictor' for success at Boston besides the weather. You might be interested in this plot of average monthly mileage for the 4 lead-up months (December-March) versus my finish time. The 2004 heatwave year with a 3:48 finish from 235 mi/month average was excluded. I'd say the relationship of More Miles = Better Finish Time seems to hold up for me. March is now almost done and so I was able to plot out the current year average of 260 mi/month and it's resulting prediction. It's lower than I'd like but you can't argue with hard numbers, now can you? At least it will give me a goal to shoot for in the realm of the possible. Just about 3 weeks left to go now and I'm still hoping to stick in a race of some kind to give a better indicator of fitness than just overall volume of work. I've got a few possible options but will have to wait and see what is feasible to do with the travel involved. Have a nice week out there, spring is in the air!