Plague, Plows and Plans

I run all winter. I don’t do it because I think everybody should, and I don’t do it to prove a point. I do it because I feel like it keeps me from putting a box around my running and shrinking that box over time. If I plan to run in all conditions, then there’s no chance of the excuses progressing from the entirely valid “It’s snowing, pitch dark, and below 0, I’ll just hit the gym.” to “It looks like it might rain.”

Plenty of people have enough self discipline to come up with a real set of rules and stick to them. I just run unless I can’t. That’s my simple rule.

This week I had two instances where I couldn’t. Last Friday I got a head cold, which I ran 8 miles with on Sunday. I took my customary rest day on Monday, despite the day off and the warm weather. By Tuesday night I regretted missing that chance to run. The headcold progressed to seemingly a sinus/bronchial infection, which knocked me out for 17 hours of sleep, and had me miss work, and any thoughts of a run, on Wednesday.

With hacking and coughing dominating over speech, I worked from home Thursday and Friday. With that flexibility, I entertained thoughts of daytime runs, so Thursday I ventured outdoors at the end of the workday, only to find that winter had actually arrived. 21 degrees on the weather report did not tell the full story of the bitter cold I encountered as I stepped out the door. Combine that with my weak state, and I turned around after merely a 2 mile total run, with my fingertips and face going numb.

Luckily after a doctor’s appointment on Friday, the magic of antibiotics, combined with beer & pizza with friends in Toledo, had brought me back from the brink, so after a week of merely 2 miles, I ran 5 miles Saturday and 8 miles sunday for a respectable 15 mile week.

I don’t always know when that commitment to always run is going to really work, but this time it did. Running all those miles this weekend picked my mood up following a really crummy week, and put me in the mindset to lay down my plans for training for the Pittsburgh Half in the spring. Instead of feeling like Pittsburgh is just a distant concept, I’m looking forward to starting my 15 week plan in the week of the 30th.

2011 Analysis

Looking back over a full year of exercise is a novel feeling for me. I don’t think I’ve had a consecutive year of quantifiable physical action since rowing crew in college, and even then, I certainly never had a record to quantify it with. Tracking progress in running though is not only eminently quantifiable, thanks to my Garmin, it’s been tremendously easy.

So in the evenings over the past few weeks, I dove into Sport Tracks, to learn a little bit about 2011.

Total Miles: 1,000.98 miles

A number so good it got its own post, last time. Still, this number means a lot to me. Running a thousand miles is something you can easily put into context for non-runners, and “almost 1,000 miles” just would not have had the same ring to it.

climb: 22,509ft
descent: -20,763ft

Sadly, this is 7,000 ft short of an everest ascent, but I’m amused to see I ascended 1,800 feet more than I descended! Must be some section of a route that really is uphill both ways.

Time: 177:09:35

177 hours is 7.37 days. I spent more than 2% of my year on my feet, running. It’s funny to think that that seems like so much out of context (over a week) but I spent a lot more than that sitting down. Hard to imagine that 2% of my time makes for an active lifestyle.

Calories: 181,643

That’s 52lbs worth of calories burned. Since I lost 40lbs last year, that means that I’m doing well, but not perfectly. While increasing my activity by 182k calories, I increased my food intake enough to offset some 42k of those. That’s about 115 a day, not bad, but not perfect.

Pace: 10:37
Avg Pace in January: 11:38
Avg Pace in December: 9:58

These are just paces for each and every run of mine, which means you can’t take it to mean best to best comparison, but as a bulk measure of how fast I’m running it’s pretty gratifying that my day to day pace increased by more than a minute and a half.

Breakdown

This is a breakdown of my workouts, by what day of the week they occurred. I ran on 43 Sundays, which is damned near all of them. Those sunday workouts account for 21% of my workouts, and about 35% of my mileage. By contrast, because of rest days, I ran on only 9 Mondays, for a paltry 42 miles. In the middle, forming the sort of backbone of my mileage, I ran on 36 of my Tuesdays and 35 of my Wednesdays, but those two together only accounted for 28% of my mileage; that’s the short weekday run showing its face, at less than half my average Sunday run.

This kind of analysis is hugely interesting to me, and I’m glad to be recording the data to pore over in the future. I can see my injuries as low points in the weekly mileage, I can see my races right after mileage peaks and corresponding tapers.

Overall, reminiscing through data has been great, but I think the one number I’ll never forget about 2011 is 3. The number of half marathons I completed.

One thousand miles

Good morning and happy 2012 everyone!

Stephanie and I are staying with our friends Chuck & Annette for our annual NYE bash with a huge group of my oldest and dearest friends. As a result I had the synchronous and satisfying experience of finishing 2011′s running right where I started it. With a 5 mile total out and back yesterday, I rounded off 2011 to almost exactly 1,000 miles. At 4.5 miles (where I hit the mark exactly, by my estimate) I was emerging from Schenley park, at the foot of the hill where Annette and I ran a few miles to start off the year, doing laps of the track on the Overlook, the Cathedral of Learning looming seemingly at eye level, as emblematic of Pittsburgh as the crazy hill arrangement that makes such a view possible. When I hit that point I cheered and shouted, though I was alone, and no one was around to share it with. I was thinking, in my heart, of my excitement to share it with all of you.

Logically I know there’s nothing more magical about 1,000 miles than there is about 999. But as with every milestone, (5k, 10k, 10 miles, 13.1 miles) the meaning is in our curiosity about them. I will tell you that among the people I told at the party, which was immodestly too many, not one asked “Why 1,000?” We all seem to understand the fascination with round numbers.

I hope that everyone out there had as good of a 2011 as I did. I will keep writing (and running) in 2012.