Running the Distance

On December 30th, I ran my last run of 2012. Seven kilometres on a bright, crisp, beautiful Canadian winter morning. I came home, stretched, showered, and plugged in my Garmin to upload my run. I then opened my 2012 running spreadsheet and entered the time and distance. My 7k was added to my yearly total, bringing it to 974.6km.

If I had known I would get so close to 1000km I would have added an extra kilometre here and there to push it over the edge.

That being said, 974.6 is nothing to sneeze at, especially when I opened my 2011 spreadsheet and saw that I ran just over 800km that year. Granted I was injured for twelve weeks but I was also marathon training and my monthly average (for the months I was actually running) was almost double that of this year's.

Keeping track of distance makes it fun to look back over the year and do what I like to do best - find patterns.

Here is what the year looked like:

- January 60km (just coming off a stress fracture)
- February 56km (still recovering...)
- March 97km (ramping it up for the Women's half marathon)
- April 111km (increasing the mileage)
- May 108km (keeping the mileage high)
- June 81km (taper, half-marathon and Welland Triathlon)
- July 70km (ease off after three heavy months of running)
- August 72km (Grimsby triathlon)
- September 111km (Guelph triathlon and then begin increasing my training for two fall races)
- October 66km (Twin-Cities ten miler and the Niagara Falls half)
- November 59km (recovery month plus busiest work month of the year)
- December 84km (ramp it up again to prepare for the Boxing Day ten miler)

My highest weekly total was 38km which was the week I peaked during my spring half-marathon training.

My average weekly distance was 18.1km and my average monthly was 80km.

There were only two weeks out of the year that I did not run at all.

I went through three pairs of shoes and am 137km into my fourth.

Goals for 2013 
- run the Tel-Aviv half marathon in March, the Women's half marathon in June and a fall half (yet to be determined). That will bring my total to 11 half-marathons!
- complete three triathlons, at least one of them an Olympic distance
- stay injury-free
- log over 1000km of running

Other training-related goals
- use my heart rate monitor and figure out how to train more effectively using heart rate rather than just pace
- commit to one workout per week that focuses on hills and speed. I want to get stronger and faster this year

Non-running goals
- get better on the bike. Period. It's my worst sport and all the people I blow past during a triathlon swim smoke me minutes later on the bike, making me look like I'm hardly moving. Bah!

Oh, and continue to run for the sheer love of running - in the cold, rain, sun, wind, heat, humidity, snow and ice that is Canada.

Thank you for sticking around folks. Here's to another year of Running on Carbs.