I've had several successful award ticket bookings lately at the lowest mileage levels.
A couple of weeks ago, a buddy of mine called to invite me on a last-minute ski trip to Colorado. He had managed to secure us a lot of comped stuff at the ski areas so all I had to do was get an award itinerary for myself to get four days of skiing for next to nothing.
My friend called me on Thursday afternoon, February 25. Late that night (technically early Friday morning) I booked the following itinerary.
Saturday 2/27 TPA-MSP-DEN in Coach
Wednesday 3/3 DEN-ATL-TPA in First (it was actually an early morning redeye).
Total miles 35,000 (combination of 25K low coach and 45K low First).
The Wednesday morning DEN-ATL was the same flight that my friend was on and his upgrade cleared so we ended up sitting next to each other in first (not that it mattered much since I was asleep the whole way).
He flew ATL-DEn on Friday (2/26) evening. There was First Class award availability for me to join him on that flight also, but I had to attend an event in Tampa with my wife on Friday night.
My original TPA-MSP-DEN flights were in the early afternoon so I did an SDC to an early morning TPA-CVG-DEN itinerary so I could get a few hours of skiing in that afternoon. That plan worked great and I even managed to convince a TPA GA to give me an unofficial award ticket upgrade into the half-empty F cabin for the TPA-CVG leg. The only problem with this was that the combination of 2 to 3 hours of sleep Friday night and the ride in a 12-passenger van to 9000 feet gave me the worst altitude sickness I've ever experienced.