Useless running info and race PRs

Last week when I didn't get a run in I decided to catch up on emails and blogs, which led me to think through a whole bunch of different things. One email that caught my attention was from Matt M. and it was his normal reminder about the million mile contest and so figured I may as well join the contest and enter my mileage. What's with me and groups lately, anyway, in order to enter my mileage I needed to know my mileage per month going back to January 1997. So that required me to go ahead and add up my mileage by month which ultimately led me down a fun statistical journey where I noticed a few useless trends and figured I may as well go ahead and post them.

• Current total mileage (since December 1991) - 15,815 miles as of today
• 2009 YTD mileage - 244 miles
  
• Highest mileage year - 2008 - 1350 miles
• 2nd highest mileage year - 1997 - 1305 miles
  
• Yearly average miles - 962 miles
• Lowest mileage year - 2003 - 441 miles
  
• Best 5 year period (1993-1998) - 1131 miles
• Worst 5 year period (2001-2005) - 698 miles
  
• Year with the most high mileage months - 5 months in 2008
  
• Years with other high mileage months - 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2000
• Month with the highest total - 151 miles - September of 1995
• Month with the lowest total - 91 miles - December of 1996
• Highest average month - September - 103.35 miles
• 2nd highest average month - April - 93.53 miles
• 3rd highest average month - August - 93.53 miles
• Lowest average month - November - 62.06 miles
  
• 2nd lowest average month - December - 62.88 miles
  
• 3rd lowest average month - July - 63.06 miles
  

Best high mileage month & year & miles

• January - 1998 - 113
  
• February - 1997 - 105
• March - 1997 - 145
• April - 2008 - 146
• May - 1994 - 124
• June - 2008 - 126
• July - 2008 - 139
• August - 2000 - 137
• September - 1995 - 151
• October - 2008 - 133
• November - 2008 - 130
• December - 1996 - 91

How does this relate to anything, my guess is it probably doesn't but it was interesting to pull the info together and since I was compiling fairly useless statistical info, I figured I might as well add up a few more so I went back through my race times and decided to post my best times. I am thinking that by posting these times, it just might do two things. First remind me of how long ago I was in better shape (faster but not fast) and then motivate me to get back as I still believe I can beat all of my previous times which is an advantage of not running until my 30's and not setting overly fast PR's. If it turns out that PR's aren't in my future, it will give me something else to work on which should help me move up from the very back of the pack so that in my longer races the cutoff's will be just a bit further away.

Distance PR's
1 mi - 06:02 - 07/30/95 - Run for the Gold (only timed mile I have ever done)
5k - 20:48 - 10/17/94 - Grand Tour (Total of 7 5k's)
4 miler - 27:54 - 07/22/96 - Run for the Gold (# of 4 milers - 4)
8k - 35:40 - 07/04/97 - AV 4th of July (# of 8k's - 10)
10k - 44:38 - 04/30/94 Get in Gear (# of 10k's - 8)
15k - 01:13:35 - 09/10/95 - JJ Days (# of 15k's - 1)
20k - 01:48:20 - 04/09/94 - Rochester (# of 20k's - 1)
1/2 marathon - 01:44:59 - 05/10/97 - New Prague (# of 1/2 Marathons - 20)
25k - 02:09:49 - 09/07/97 - City of Lakes (# of 25k's - 5)
20 miler - 03:48:00 - 09/12/98 - Ready 2 Rock (# of 20 milers - 1)
Marathon - 04:02:33 - 06/19/93 - Grandmas & TCM - 10/08/95 (# of Marathons - 31)
50k - 07:44:10 - 07/05/08 - Afton 50k (# of 50k's - 4)

Notice how most of PR's were in the mid 90's. I would like to say it was age that caught up to me but in my case it was injuries (two knee surgeries 99 & 03) which led to some weight gain followed by a loss of motivation to run shorter distances and to work hard and I quit being consistent in my training.

So in 2009, my plan is to add back in some shorter distance races or at least add speed workouts and to still continue to run the longer distances. May or may not go together but it is what I want and need to do.