I'm not sure whether my increased running totals for this past month represent an aberration or part of a continuing process...I suspect the former...but I did have some higher figures: 290 total miles, I ran on all the days of the month, and 18 miles was my longest single run. I ran in two races: the Micanopy 10 Mile hosted by the Florida Track Club on March 19th and a Depot Parkrun 5K the following Saturday. I doubt that I'll be running as much as the weather warms further into the spring/summer seasons...I'm hoping to "step" up the walking, as well as begin some swimming workouts, to balance out the picture a bit...
On the April 9-10 weekend there are two upcoming local races. On Saturday the 9th the Florida Track Club is holding another event, this one the Headwaters 5K that takes place near my home in northern Gainesville. I ran it last year and it's free with my FTC membership. And then there is the "Run Your Buns Off" event the next morning, starting and finishing from the outlying town of Hawthorne and using a six-mile-plus strip of the Hawthorne Trail to simultaneously stage a number of races, ranging from 5K to a marathon. They accomplish these distances by having entrants undergo multiple there-and-back cycles...the half-marathon involves two and the marathon four, so you're basically covering the same territory over and over again. The half costs $65 and the marathon a whopping $90. I don't know...the prospect of spending this amount of money to run a half-marathon with such an unvarying, repetitive course just doesn't appeal to me, especially with the prospect of that free race the previous day (closer to home and with a more interesting course). After that weekend the only local races I see in "my" Alachua County area are the Depot Parkruns that take place each Saturday morning...my intention is to try them out once or twice a month throughout the rest of the spring and summer. I might try out some speed-walking in some of those races...I did walk for a total of 125 miles in March...