18 Weeks

So here it is, 18 weeks of training in one post. To save myself a lot of typing, I'm going to list the weekly mileage totals that my training plan had and the total mileage I completed. 

         Training plan weekly total             Completed weekly total

1.              19                                                    16
2.              18                                                    19.7
3.              22                                                    20.1
4.              21                                                    19.5
5.              28                                                    26.5
6.              29                                                    24.5
7.              33                                                    28
8.              30                                                    29
9.              38                                                    34.5
10.           33-38                                                  26.2
11.              41                                                    34.5
12.              39                                                    37.4
13.              44                                                    33.2
14.            33-36                                                 30
15.              44                                                    36
16.              37                                                    32
17.              26                                                    23
18.           Race Week!

So you'll notice right away that only one time did I reach the weekly mileage total. The main reason for this was that I almost never ran on Saturdays and when I did, I didn't run on Sunday. The training plan usually had 4 miles scheduled for Saturdays, but I needed one weekend day off, so I usually skipped the Saturday run. The longest weekday run I did was just under 6 miles as I did them all on my lunch break. I never once got up early before work and ran the 7-8 miles called for on my training schedule and I'm OK with that. I think it sort of helped me as I made sure to maximize my time and not just put in the miles for the sake of putting in the miles. I feel like I worked harder at running some of my 5 mile routes than I did in 2009 running a 6-7 mile run.  In 2009 I put in longer weekday runs, but would skimp on my long weekend runs which I feel really hurt me more than I realized.
I will say that with the exception of my first 20 miler (I did 16 miles before stopping because I "tweaked" my knee) I completed all my long runs. It was my main training goal this year to make sure I really worked on hammering out the long runs and I think I did that...for the most part.
I don't know if I would recommend this training plan for everyone, but it really worked for me and my schedule, but it does have you running 6 days a week.

Anyway, this is kind of boring, so I'll stop.

Later