2012 wrap-up, looking further back and 2013 goals

Happy New Year!

I think 2012 has been a pretty good year of running for me.  At CIM (Dec  2011) I ran a PR (3:56:34) and then at Eugene this last April I re-peaked and shaved a bit more off on a slightly less speedy course. (3:54:54)

I also ran two beautiful and fun trail marathons and my more intense training showed there too.. ran much faster times for these very hilly races.

And of course I ran Berlin (one of the majors) and had a great time pacing Lynne and seeing all the crowds and Berlin in general. It's a great city (and one of the cheapest capital cities to stay in in Europe, btw).

The only problem of the year was a calf strain that bugged me just before the Ragnar I was supposed to run. I ended up pulling out of that...waiting patiently a few weeks for healing, and then doing as much running as I dared to be ready for Berlin. 

After a month off work and traveling around with zero running, I started up again and re-pulled my calf in the same place. Clearly something was wrong.  As of year-end I'm doing much better and I think I know what was happening...a full post will come to later on that subject! It's a good lesson to remember.

Here's my running for the last year in my favorite format. The graph shows a lot at once: .miles per run  by the Y axis length,  age of the run on the X axis, color mix shows the HR distribution during the run. 

You can see my 4 marathons sticking up (Eugene, 2 trail races and Berlin) and you can see the gaps due to my calf pulls and my 3 weeks of time off after Berlin. I actually ran Berlin on very little training...compare the ramp up of distance you can see to the left of the first spike (Eugene at about age=-240 days) with the mish-mash of runs before Berlin at age about -90 days. Just goes to show you if you slow down a little bit you can go and go.. Its the all-out running that is HARD for me.

This next graph shows my pace vs HR for each split that wasn't run on a huge up or downhill.  My 9 min/mile HR is about 130 bpm and it takes about 10 bpm to speed up by 1 min/mile. These numbers are about as good as I've ever seen.

Another view of my years miles, this time with some smoothing. The average distance per run is about 7 miles but I ran less than 3.5 days/ week when averaged over the year.

All in all 2012 a good year!

Goals for 2013:
* implement calf strain solutions and have smooth build-up to Tacoma in May.
* Run a hard race in Tacoma and leave it all on the course (assuming good weather).
* Enjoy the 10 year MM reunion.
* Run Chicago (perhaps peaked).
* Run GG trail marathon again, and pick another new trail marathon to do.
* Get around to running some shorter races!

Looking further back

I started running in about March of 2007. After losing 50 lbs over one year (running very VERY slowly) I bought a Garmin 405 and I ran the San Francisco half marathon in July 2008.  That fall I did my first marathon training buildup and ran Napa on 3/1/2009.

That's about 4 years of serious running with 15 marathons and one 50k.  Let's take a look at the raw stats for each year:

Date	Miles	Pace	BPM	WHR%	Cad
2009	1264.4	10:46	112.2	54.28	80.7
2010	1112.7	10:06	122.3	62.55	82.9
2011	1146.6	10:10	123.8	63.75	85.1
2012	1168.3	9:48	125.0	64.77	86.8

You can see I've run almost the same mileage every year: 1100 - 1200 miles. However 2012 year was a bit speedier ....about 20sec/mile.  

Each year there were 140-180 runs...that's roughly 7 miles per run...seems to be how I roll 8). 

The graph above is for all 4 years of running. You can see there is less blue and more other colors (higher HRs) for the last year vs the previous.

You can also see the 16 spikes of marathon distances.....and from -1000 days to -600 days the 8 spikes that were my '8 marathons in 322 days' that got me Marathon Maniacs two stars.

On to 2013!