This month I made a concerted effort to kick it into a higher gear with the running. Mid-month was the start of the Strava training plan I’m going to try and follow for race preparation.

The longer mileage is feeling good. I wasn’t sure what to expect when doing longer times with only single days of recovery in between, but it’s really not bad. The latest few runs have actually felt great cardio-wise right up until the end. The limiters at the moment are the heat (nothing I can really do about that) and some calf muscle and plantar fasciitis pains in the left foot. I’ve been doing lots of stretching and foam-rolling after runs, though, to try and counteract that, which I think is working alright so far. I’m trying to pace my mileage increase so I don’t end up with a real injury that really throws a wrench into the plan.

For books this month the most notable was the finale to Cixin Liu’s Remembrance trilogy, Death’s End. I haven’t had the time to write up many thoughts yet on that series, but it’s up there with the all-time best science fiction, for sure. Another pleasantly surprising read was Simon Winchester’s Pacific, which is a broad history of events and places on the Pacific Ocean since the 1950s. It’s one I plan on writing a longer piece about sometime down the road.

So that’s August in the can. Having pushed the running to 40 miles over the pace mark, I think I should be able to get to +60 at least by end of September, perhaps even higher if weather and health permit.