Wednesday, December 31, 2014

2014 year review


I started officially running in 1995 which makes this the completion of my 20th year.  2014 was an interesting year, no PR’s and in most measurements never the best but far from the worst year of running.  I think the main reason for this was my real life.  I went from being a teacher back into an office job.   I sure many other thing affected my running to but really I am not complaining.  I am very happy with the year I had and not every year has to be better than the previous.

Stats
I keep a lot of statistics and track all kinds of data.   I love being able to look back and compare what I am doing now with any previous time in my running.     My running log contains my last 15 years of running and includes over 16,000 miles.  Below are a few of the more important stats that I track, next year I hope to have 1st next to each.

2,201 miles, 3rd best year
234 Days run, 5th best year
360:03:16 total running time, 2nd best year
141,084 vertical climbing, first year recording but I am sure it would be the most of any other year

11 Races
I had a pretty good year of racing.  The main focus of the year and the highlight was the Indian creek 50mi.  The whole year was about training and running tough mountain ultra.    Running all those slow miles on the trails was probably the reason for the lack of PR’s this year.   Also this year I got to pace my first marathon the 4:00 group at Colfax.    I love running new races and this year 6 of the 11 race that I ran were brand new to me.

7 - Marathons, fastest 3:27:55 3rd best marathon missed my PR by 55 seconds
1 - Ultra Marathon, 2nd 50miler but this one featured 11,000ft of elevation gain
1 - 10k, 41:32 2nd best 10K
3 – half marathons, fastest 1:33:28 2nd fast half marathon

Streaks
Streaks were the first statistic that I tracked when I first began my running log.  At western State I ran 117 days in a row for a total of 1,104 miles, over 9 miles a day over 4 months.  I don’t run endlessly like that anymore without breaks but I still find streaks useful in tracking my consistency.    over the years I have noticed that consistency in running in very important.  Here are some of my running steaks that I continued in 2014.  (I track about 45 streak stats)

4 years – 2000 total miles
5 years – 200 days run
58 months – 100 total miles
48 months – Long run of at least 15 miles
132 weeks – Run at least 2 days