Yearly Training Totals...and can I ever get to 1000 miles of running?

If I am ever to prove that I am a somewhat obsessive Type A personality, it will be in the fact that I have kept track of every workout I've done since 2004.   This happened to be the year that I finally got my iron-deficiency anemia under control and allowed me to exercise without feeling like I was going to pass out and die.

More than that, my workout logs tell me a lot about where I've been, what I've done, and what I've loved.  They track the progression from my first short triathlon to tackling an Ironman, from a first marathon to doing 16 in one calendar year.   They show the change from swimming to kayaking as I switched to Adventure Racing, and then back to hiking when gearing up for the Red Bull X-Alps.  

Key Events

2004*	My first Triathlon
2005	My first Marathon (moved to Germany)
2006	My first Ultramarathon
2007	Completed 17 Marathons
2008	Completed 2 Ironman Triathlons
2009*	Traveled around the world…not much exercise tho
2010	My first Adventure Race (moved to England)
2011	Completed 4 day Stage Race across England
2012	Completed 99 hour Expedition Adventure Race
2013*	(Moved to Utah)
2014	Paragliding trumped everything
2015	Red Bull X-Alps
2016	RAGBRAI and the John Muir Trail
2017	???

Dawn's Yearly Distance Totals (in Miles)   *Partial Information for these years
	Bike	Run	Swim	Walk	Weight	Kayak	Grand Total
2004*	671	112	15		42		840*
2005	618	334	15	299	14		1280
2006	552	479	7	615	79		1733
2007	599	591	21	637	169		2016
2008	2807	551	75	86	20		3539
2009*	652	91	7	45	16		809*
2010	554	608	13	497	132		1804
2011	1522	833	7	459	120	126	3067
2012	1216	621	3	602	85	125	2651
2013*	95	123		186	91	7	501*
2014	111	479		325	161	20	1095
2015	360	291		941	58		1649
2016	1512	367		484	43	11	2417

Dawn's Yearly Time Totals (in Hours) *Partial Information for these years

	Bike	Run	Swim	Walk	Weights	Kayak	Grand Total
2004*	59:53:00	17:51:50	14:11:35		16:05:00		108:01:25
2005	53:24:00	52:04:00	14:31:00	149:55:00	8:18:00		278:12:00
2006	50:06:00	78:20:47	6:44:00	227:49:00	54:39:00		417:38:47
2007	46:57:05	99:22:26	17:41:00	236:38:00	101:59:05		502:37:36
2008	212:09:59	97:11:04	50:43:28	39:20:53	11:48:00		411:13:24
2009*	44:44:09	16:52:28	3:46:06	17:35:00	5:20:00		88:17:43
2010	42:30:32	115:58:45	8:32:54	159:34:00	50:35:00		377:11:11
2011	159:04:55	178:19:55	4:40:00	172:42:00	67:53:00	33:58:00	616:37:50
2012	164:46:00	138:00:40	1:55:00	242:04:00	65:25:00	31:55:00	644:05:40
2013*	16:30:00	26:10:00		74:10:00	53:00:00	1:45:00	171:35:00
2014	19:49:00	91:47:55		122:14:00	73:40:00	4:30:00	312:01:55
2015	58:38:00	54:11:00		313:31:00	45:25:00		471:45:00
2016	148:51:00	69:22:00		204:17:00	33:18:00	2:40:00	458:28:00

It's a ritual at the end of each year to add up all my exercise totals and see how I compare to myself of previous years.  Sometimes it don't fit into a category (random rollarblading, for example).  Weight training doesn't lend itself to distance very well either.    Obviously I'm not trying to outdo myself each year, nor would that be healthy or possible for too many years in a row.    But I do get a sense of how fast and far I go, broken down into pretty little graphs like this:

I can also break my training down by week inside my excel spreadsheet to know how consistent I am during the year.   Obviously could create any categories you wanted to...Zumba, Yoga, whatever.  Or Zother...which means everything I do except Run, Walk, Bike or Kayak, which is mostly time spent in the gym but occasionally rock climbing or rollerblading.

Seeing my low running totals for 2016 and the fact that I only completed one run of a marathon or longer this year, I am setting a goal of 1000 running miles for 2017.  This perhaps is partially inspired by the UK Ultrarunning magazine's post about challenging yourself to this distance.   http://www.trailrunningmag.co.uk/run1000miles/

I've officially signed up, and I'll try to average 2.7 miles per day for the rest of 2017 :)     I wish that New Year's Revolution Run had actually been on Jan 1 so I'd be ahead of schedule...as it is I'm in recovery from that race and I'll have to make up some ground this month.  

Check back in a year to see if I make it!

New Year's 5-Hour Revolution Run 2017 (and a new Ultramarathon Training Plan)

Usually this would be the first race of the New Year for all the bleary eyed people who stayed up too late on New Year's Eve, partying and watching the ball drop.   Is there even a ball anymore?  I swear I watched Time's Square (on TV) at midnight in New York and missed seeing the ball at all.   Anyway, because New Year's fell on a Sunday this year, and we are in Utah, the partying could go on in full swing because the race was moved to New Year's Eve (Saturday) instead.   So all those extroverts could get in a long run, fell great about their fitness, and then go out, dress up and have a ball.  It seemed like most people weren't really celebrating a new year, but the death of 2016...which by most accounts people were happy to have over.  I won't lie...I was in bed and asleep by 10:30 with the excuse that my legs were really tired from running.

I haven't had any races (or blogs) in a while, but I should make up for it in the new year.  I'm most excited about my new training plan, brought to me by Jason Koop in his new book Training Essential for Ultrarunning, out on Amazon (like my own recently published book Racing to the Sky). Koop's ideas on ultramarathon training differ from the commonly held belief that an ultra is just a longer marathon and the same training plan will work.  He states that trails ultras take much longer, are hillier, tougher and completely different from a 2 to 4 hour marathon run.    Koop advocates that speed work is very important for athletes, but should be done well in advance of the actual race.   When the date actually approaches, what becomes more important is training (as much as possible)  to the conditions and course you see on your ultra.

So I'm incorporating his ideas of starting with speed work first, and I've just finished a 4 week block of sprint repeats (warmup, 1-3 minutes of running very fast, then 1-3 minutes rest, repeat 5-10 times, then cool down).    I did this workout 2-4 times a week each week.   Yes, this is a lot more speed work than most people imagine is possible, but I saw my speed increase as the weeks went by, and I'm sure my VO2 Max went up as well.

Still, the longest I had run was about 7 miles in the last 9 months, so running for 5 hours might not have been the best idea for New Year's Eve.  There was this biking thing called RAGBRAI in July, and then Jim and I hiked the John Muir Trail in August.  October harvest in Iowa put us in a tractor for 5 weeks straight and I didn't run once.   Ouch.  So I haven't trained for running much since finishing the Antelope Canyon 50 miler back in February.

All of this recent speed training haa taught me to run fast, and then my recovery runs have been slow.  So I've either been running at 6 minute mile pace, or at 10 minute mile pace.   For this Revolution Run, I felt like I could pull off a 4 hour marathon pace, which is pretty fast for me.   That's about a 9 minute mile pace, which I HADN'T been running at at all.  Jason Koop's biggest bit of advice (train the way you want to run).  Hah.   Luckily this was just a "training" race for me.

It was pretty cold and snowy outside on New Year's Eve.  Luckily the race is held indoors, at the Utah Olympic Oval.  A 442 meter track is inside, as well as a speed-skating oval, a hockey rink and an ice skating rink.   All that ice made the temperature perfect for a long run in shorts and a t-shirt, no overheating for anyone, even through 360 people were lined up alongside me to run countless laps around what would become a very crowded 4 lane oval (once the 8-lane 100-meter section ended)



The run was officially as long and a far as each person wanted it to be.   Medals were given for any distance from just 1 laps completed, to the winner who finished an outstanding 139 laps...that's a lot of circles for almost 37 miles.

My first few laps were the most crowded, as everyone sorted themselves and spread out.  I stuck to the inside lane and didn't have to go around too many people, nor did too many have to go around me...except for a few fast men and women who lapped me over and over again.

The hardest part was keeping track of how far I had gone.  Yes, I had a timing chip and after a while the finish line screen showed the number of laps we had completed each time we crossed the mat.  I had run 30 laps by the time the screen came on, although when I looked at it, my count only said 28.  Was I that bad at counting?  I resorted to using my fingers, as thinking and remembering obscure numbers like 47 and 53 become difficult when pushing the pace and dodging joggers.  

Every 10 laps I stopped to drink some water or coke and have a couple of twizzlers.   I felt really good for the first 2 hours, maintained a great pace of about 9 minute miles, and my legs were strong.  Then the endless circles became monotonous, and the speed skaters whizzing by me could not longer distract me.   I tried to think of a recent long run (oops, I hadn't done one!), and realized that finishing a marathon like I had planned would really trash my legs and become very painful.   After 3 hours and about 18 miles, my legs were cramping from the flatness (yes the occasional hill IS nice), so I finished my 68th lap and picked up my medal.

Here's the Results:
http://newyearsrevolutionrun.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/RevRun17-Sheet1.pdf

I'll have another indoor run at this Oval, a half-marathon in late February.   By then I will be finishing up with my next block of training, a series of tempo runs (8-20 minute repeats, but not done as fast as the sprint repeats).   My training sessions will gradually start to get longer as I work towards preparing for the Monument Valley 50 Mile in late March.   But my real "A" race of the year is the AXS 12 hour Adventure Race in late April down in Moab, Utah.   I've done this race 3 times, come 3rd every time, and this year, dare I say it, I want to win.   So I'll be tailoring my training schedule and my recovery to be my fastest in April.