Sunday, January 3, 2010

Reviewing your runs is so last year

2009 was half of a pretty good year for running. I started off the year doing one mile runs on the treadmill after taking the last 5 months of 2008 off from running after having knee surgery. I did mostly road biking and some other cardio machines at the gym during the off-time. I was biking most weekends for a couple of hours while my knee got stronger. By mid-February I started running a few more miles on the treadmill until I decided to test my knee outside and found it to be okay. In March I started doing ~1hr runs after work on Fridays out to Bridle Trails Park. I wasn't concerned with time, just distance and enjoyment of the trails when they were dry.

I was running 7 - 9 mile runs once a week, doing 12 - 20 miles a week between the treadmills at lunch, Friday runs after work and the occasional Saturday runs around the neighborhood. I kept up with the road cycling on the weekends until my son was born in August. I started focusing more on running on the weekends as it's quicker to get a workout in than dealing with the bike and all of the accessories that go along with it. I started taking my daughter out in the jog stroller for her naps on weekends and started increasing the distances to the 10 - 12 mi range.

By September I mapped out a route that I could run from the gym at work during lunch that is almost exactly 6 miles. My competitive drive took over and I started pushing myself really hard to run this somewhat hilly route. I also started focusing more on running at lunch rather than weightlifting. I was running the work loop twice a week and doing another treadmill session and increasing my weekend long runs slowly.

I had to give up the jog stroller runs in early October when the weather turned too cold for my daughter to have any interest in joining me on my weekend runs. I also got sick in October and blew off two weeks of running around my birthday.

I kept up the focus on speed in November finally hitting my goal of 42 minutes for my 6 mile work loop. I also entered a local hilly 10K after being inspired by a "pain cave" comment Chris made on Twitter. I managed about 15th place and finished the race in 40:39 (Garmin said that the course was only 6.01 miles).

In December I started running faster on the treadmill after the weather really dipped to below 32F for a week. I just didn't want to try to gut myself on a fast run while I was freezing and trying to avoid icy patches. I found that running fast on the treadmill is much easier than outdoors, managing a sub 39 10K indoors.

My monthly mileage was a bit scattered:

Jan 5.00
Feb 33.50
Mar 22.20
Apr 48.25
May 57.70
Jun 40.50
Jul 21.75
Aug 24.25
Sep 55.15
Oct 46.70
Nov 94.51
Dec 102.50

for a total of 552 miles for the year. It's not the 1200 - 1400 miles I used to do in 2002/2003 when running was all I focused on. Oddly though I have much less time to run now and yet I'm faster on the short distances (we'll see if I do a marathon again) and now I try not to run back-to-back days to save my knee some stress.

Base goals for 2010:
- Run two 50K trail races.
- Beat my 10K PR after turning 40.
- Run on the trails more

Stretch goals for 2010:
- Convince my sister to run a marathon with me.
- Break 37 minutes in the 10K.
- complete a 100K


I'd be happy to hit even one of the stretch goals but I've never been good at thinking big when it comes to goals, so there you go. Here's to an injury free 2010 for anyone reading my crap musings. Get out there and run!

3 comments:

Stuart said...

Hi and thanks for stopping by my blog and listening to the podcast. I am sorry to read that it sounded like an advert. I do try to be as impartial as possible in my reviews; although there is some inevitability when setting the stage that there is some element of advertising. Typically I state when the content is from the producers website. However As you will have read there was quite a bit of research that went above and beyond that; analyzing the other items included in other juices, the FDA info and the E number info were all independent. And as you will have read I had an unanswered question and ultimately wasn't that struck with the taste!

nrmrvrk said...

I went back and re-read my comment and i'd like to apologize for it's derogatory tone. I didn't mean it as a criticism, just that it read mostly like ad copy from Pom and not what you normally write. I did appreciate your opinion at the end of the review. I've almost bought Pom a few times to drink with a meal but was thrown by the price and the worry that it'd be way too sweet. Thanks for the explanation and doing the site/podcast.

Stuart said...

No worries, there is often a lot 'lost in translation' in writing, I appreciated your honest comment, thanks for the response