Gunning for a Big December

Dorothy Stewart Trail and the Sangres in morning light

Strava tells me that my running mileage for the year is at a disappointing 409mi. The good news is that I have five weeks to adjust this total. I've come up just short of 500mi in both of the last two years. This is humiliating enough to admit without adding a third year and 50% more failure to the total. Gotta bring it home with 20mi weeks in December. A pathetic goal but every journey begins with the first step.

Mini-Dirt running with Waltz and
mini-Waltz

I opted toward a long mtb ride yesterday morning rather than the annual Turkey Trot, but later I brought the little one out to the race (Atalaya) thinking he'd enjoy all the activity. Well, mini-me went crazy with the running. I'd peg his morning running at close to 2mi in random loops, back-and-forths, and roughly half of the Kids 1K race. He got away from me once so that he could run through the finishing chute. He got away from me a second time which prompted an abrupt announcement to my friends, "Shit, I lost the 2-year old". I found him though. He was running. The little fella actually cried later on our walk to the truck because 'I wouldn't let him run'.


Related Posts:
 - Mileage: How Much is Not Enough
 - Year in Review 2010

Mileage: How Much is not Enough?

Holiday miles

I'm always keenly aware when I haven't been getting outside regularly because my body seems to age an extra five years and my energy levels tank. Negative feedback loops take hold. A review of my activity logs only confirms this slide in fitness. When I downloaded my end-of-year mileage last week (while smackin' through a box of Christmas cookies, natch) I wasn't happy with the year I'd rung up. Witness the falloff:

2010	Miles		2011	Miles		2012	Miles		2013	Miles
Run	1539		Run	1050		Run	442		Run	481
Bike	316		Bike	1677		Bike	1213		Bike	504
Total Hrs:	262hrs		Total Hrs:	361hrs		Total Hrs:	193hrs		Total Hrs:	129hrs

I couldn't even hump it over the 500mi mark at year end due to an ill-timed tweak in my achilles. What have I become? It appears I've become a marshmallow (or maybe a box of cookies), that's what.

The mileage over the last four years tell a story - Years 2010 and '11 were outliers since I was training for and running marathons. The marathon in 2010 was completed much faster than in 2011, for obvious reasons. In 2011 I upgraded my mountain bike to awesome, then bombed through 3000 miles of trails over the next eighteen months. This year's less-than-impressive totals are a reflection of a busy life, the somewhat unhealthy result of months focused on professional exams and the addition of a smiling baby boy around the house, one who prefers to be ridiculously cute all the time then to being buckled into a running stroller.

Digging into the numbers is a disappointing exercise: 500 miles a year (or 481 without the rounding) is not a lot. This is ten miles a week or just two measly runs a week. Hardly even running really, that's glorified jogging. If you can't even find the time to get out and do what you enjoy then you're just too busy - some number of extracurriculars will need to be cut from my current schedule to correct this. The broader metric is even more convincing: 129 hours in one year - which includes ski outings, snowshoeing, swimming, etc. - is less than three hours a week. That is not enough and I know this even without parsing numbers in a log because I just generally feel like a schlub. When the beer doesn't taste as good as it used to, it's because of a drift toward schlub.

Holiday aesthetic

So there's the outline of my new year's goals and resolutions, supported by numbers to better measure my progress. Does your view of the new year include finding time to do more of what you enjoy and less of the path of marshmallow? Hopefully so. And we will raise a cheer to our new found ways as the year fades to winter once again.

Related Posts:
 - New Years in the Sierras: 2012
 - New Years above Taos: 2011
 - Year in Review: 2010

Year in Review - Running Log

My ride, rockin' the new snow

I made it into work on Wednesday by bike.  It was a little cold and a little wet, but I'm tough - and that's what showers and washing machines are for anyhow.  Wednesday's ride was significant because it meant that I had rode into work at least once every week since the beautiful bygone summer days of June.  By my best estimates I figure I logged at least 300 total commuter miles this year and saved about 15-20gal of gas.  I don't reckon I saved any money in this endeavor since I was busy buying up an extra bike lock, an upgraded bike pump (the new ones work really well), a needed tune-up and a new derailleur, new brake-pads and chain, and a high-grade light.  I can say with experience now that it's a lot more fun buying up stuff for your bike(s) then for your truck, and it's a lot more fun arriving at work after a morning ride than being pissed off from traffic and being held up at the short-timed traffic lights. 

Running log (mi) - Peaks for Boston, then kinda falls off a cliff

A lot of the riding and commuting I put in since October was really just a substitute for being off my feet, recuperating from an overuse injury and being really bored.  Up until this point, I had had a great year of running.  My best ever really, although with the lingering caveat that I spent the last three months of the year laid-up due to all the awesomeness.  Looking at my tally, I rang up 1500mi on the trails - or for the 9.5 months I was on my feet - an average of roughly 35-40mi p/wk.  This is almost double my mileage for all of 2009.  And while some of this increase is surely due to bigger goals and a greater depth of experience, a lot of it is due to the gradual but necessary build up of strength and resistance that came from the 20mi weeks the year before.  The results were best times in every race I ran over 5K. A seven minute drop in the marathon. Five minute drops in most races I had run in previous years.  Best times on favorite training runs that I'd run-out dozens of times over the years. I actually won one of the races I ran this year - a very foreign and out-of-body feeling to have.  Damnit, that was really awesome.  For the 5K distance and shorter (track workouts basically), I ran my quickest times since high school days, and noted the obvious, that my speed could use a lot of work in comparison to the strength and endurance I'd built up.  

Biking log (mi) - Lots of unrecorded riding during the summer

The lesson I learned from this year's work isn't that mileage necessarily builds improvement, but rather it is consistency that really adds to increased fitness and performance.  I think mileage is a metric that needs to be looked at as a measure of consistency.  My mileage the last few months is for all purposes zero, which reflects a substantial flaw in my training and long term consistency.  The success during the remainder of the year reflects a lot of work and preparation that was done well, but was fundamentally incomplete.  A regimen of stretching and balance will need to be added to stay on the trails and out of the pool. 

Swim log (hrs) - Also known as the injury log

Happy New Years!  Run well, drink local, enjoy the trails, and don't swim (b/c it is the opposite of fun). 

Related Link:
  - Santa Fe Trail Runner - A Quick Look Back