Friday, December 30, 2011

Running: A Year in Review



2011 was far from where I hoped it would be, but leaps and bounds better than 2010. I'm am going to choose to celebrate all 179miles (and change) that I ran in 2011 rather than worry about the miles I didn't run.

This little screenshot from Dailymile pretty well sums up the year.


Late February I was finally given the green light to start running again, nearly a year and a half after the whole foot debacle began. So 1/2 mile at a time I labored back into a sport I use to love.

March was still full of PT and pain and babysteps. Against my PT's better advisement, I snuck in the Shamrock Shuffle 5k. No records were set but I had a great time running one of my favorite races.

April I upped the mileage as I wanted to run the Crazylegs 8k faster than a coworker of mine (petty motivation, I know). I did not accomplish that goal, but came close. It was also sometime in April, I think, that I committed to running #RagnarChi with a group of total strangers. I was so desperately afraid of being the weak link on the team that I tried to kick it into high gear and cover some miles.

The Ragnar motivation carried me through May, as did the Lake Monona 5k. In past years we've run the Lake Monona 20k...but had to scale back this year. May also took me to TX, with my boss, to work IM Texas...where I was shamed into running extra miles. Its hard to be the chubby out of shape girl at an IM event.

June was my highest mileage month in 2011, in large part due to #RagnarChi, both the training for and running of. Did I mention that I had an amazing time at Ragnar and am so very excited to be running it again this year?!?

The summer heat started to get to me in July and the mileage dwindled. At that point I had no future races on the calendar and felt ok about running if, and only if, I felt like it.

The busy season really started to set in at work in August, which gave me 101 excuses not to run. I'm fairly certain it was the incredibly last minute decision to join a #RagnarGR team that motivated any miles at all in August. I have to admit that over 1/2 of August's miles were Ragnar itself, which explains why it was such a sufferfest...

September. Yep. GOOSE-EGG. Between work and getting hitched I just didn't make time to run. I'm more or less ok with this.

October was only slightly more active than October. Another busy work month, half of which was spent in Hawaii and we all know that running in Hawaii would be just dreadful...

I'm not sure what my excuse is for the secondhalf of October/first half of November, but I certainly couldn't not be motivated to run. Uh, oh well.

The end of November took us to Thailand for nearly 3wks of honeymooning. While I'm sure we walked dozens of miles, there was no running on the schedule. I think our trek through the Chiang Mai zoo and 1/2 way down Sutthep should count for something, but neither of those feats were done at anything faster than a brisk walk.

Which brings us to the tail end of December. Thus far I have 11m for the month. If I can eek out 20 3/4m by the 31st I can finish 2011 with 200m in the books. I am incredibly tempted to attempt this. Probably not my brightest decision as that would be doubling my mileage from last week, which is so much more than the 10% that is traditionally prescribed, and probably a sure-fire recipe for injury, but since when do I make good decisions?







UPDATE

Since the Dailymile screenshot was taken I I have made it closer to my 200m goal. I am now ~9.75m from breaking the 200m wall. I did in fact take a rest day today, so with only one day left in the month, and only 6.5m planned for tomorrow it's not looking like I'm going to ake it. Unless I do a two-fer tomorrow. But perhaps it's time to stop stressing over what I have, and have not, accomplished in 2011 and focus on what's in store for 2012.

2 comments:

Lora Abernathy said...

Glad you were able to get back in the game after being out for such a long time. Best wishes in the new year!

Anonymous said...

Great year coming back from a foot injury. It's tough re-starting! Cheers to a happy 2012!