Five Fifty-Five

So I've got a pretty good thing going: I call it the Five Fifty-Five.

I get up at 5:50 a.m., then run 5 miles. I used to wake up at 6 a.m., but I find giving myself the extra 10 minutes gives me just enough time to get up, run 5 miles, and get cleaned up in time to leave for work at 7:30.

Since I can only run 5 miles each workday morning, I'm pretty much going to have to run every weekday, and at least one weekend day, in order to reach my goal of 140 miles per month, and thus the larger goal of 1,000 miles for the year. 140 per month breaks down to about 35 miles per week, so ideally, I'd run 25 on the weekdays and then do one long 10-miler on the weekends. The weather's still fairly hot, so I'm not sure I'm ready for a 10-miler yet. Last week, when I tried to run 8 miles (on an admittedly hot day), I ended up running 7 instead.

Anyway, this week I ran five miles on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday mornings. I slept in on Wednesday, but I was able to make up for Wednesday by running another 5 miles Friday evening.

Tomorrow marks the start of August, the first full month of my crusade for 1,000. I've crossed the 300 mile mark for the year, so that's a significant milestone. I have 671 to go to hit 1,000, and I'm feeling pretty good about it.