2011 Re-cap

2011 is behind me which is ok with me. No marathons, no ultras and for races only a 5 miler, a 1/2 marathon, a 25k and a sprint tri. I was able to volunteer at a couple of events and really enjoyed helping out so much, that if I was smart I might just retire and become a full time volunteer but no need to worry I am not smart enough to do that :-).

I did learn that running through injuries doesn't work and that sometimes you do need to seek medical assistance and it does pay to follow their advice. That is my one big lesson from 2011, if you have an injury you need to deal with it. I failed to do that in the fall of 2010 and ultimately lost out on most of 2011.

I also rediscovered running shorter distances which allowed me to get in more runs each week and to focus  on different type of workouts (speed, repeats or hills and occasionally just a short recovery run). Later in the year, I started to transition to minimalist running with my VFF's which I plan to continue into 2012. The good news is that I learned a lot (I think) and ended the year running relatively pain free so I am looking forward to some successful events in 2012, more on that later.

There were a couple interesting statistical things that showed up.

Average run distance was down (5.95 vs 8.8) , yet days run/week (3.15 vs 2.92) was up
Mileage down for the year (975 vs 1338), yet days run (164 vs 152) up for the year
May in 2010 was my high mileage (168) for the year, May in 2011 was my low mileage (20) for the year
Set all time mileage for December at 95 miles, it's my statistical lowest mileage month
Consecutive days without a run - 19 days

Here is my summary:
2011 miles - 975 miles

High mileage month - March, 122 miles
Low mileage month - May, 20 miles 
Weekly Avg. - 18.75 miles
Longest run - 40 miles
Average run - 5.95 miles
Consecutive days - 6
Max days run in a week - 6
Average days run/week - 3.15
Total days run this year - 164
Weekday runs - 31.5% of available days
Weekend runs - 76.4% of available days

Events Participated in

April 9th - McNaughton 50 - dropped at 40 miles

July 16th - Turtle Trot Triathlon

October 29th - Surf the Murph 25k

November 6th - Rails to Trails 1/2 Marathon

November 24th - Gobble Gait 8k

Training plan thoughts - a day or so later

As I was thinking more about my training plan and what I wanted to do, I re-read the comment from Matt concerning training and I think he has a great point so as I pondered the run today, what did I do? I went out tonight and got in 4 miles, I would have preferred a longer run but considering the temp was around 15F and there was a nice brisk 17+ mph westerly wind, gusting to 30 mph (windchill ~ -5F or colder depending on gusts) and sleet which thankfully turned to snow, I am happy that I did what I did as it actually turned out to be kind of fun. Not great miles but miles on a day where last week I would have looked outside and said no.

On a different but related note, I saw this post from someone on the ultra list giving advice to someone on doing their first 50, it looks like a great place to start if you want info on Ultrarunning training information. The first two links I have used before but the third one was new (to me) and seemed to have a lot of useful information.

Kevin Sayres' http://www.ultrunr.com is still a good place to start reading.

"UltraRunning" magazine has regular nutrition articles: http://www.ultrarunning.com

Another Web site to distract me:

http://www.ultramarathonrunning.com/training/index.html