2008 in the Rearview Mirror

Do you see those 'rascally' deer sneaking behind me there? This was at the very end of today's 10 miler just before reaching my laneway (you can see the sign) as I watched 9 deer hop, skip and jump across the road. If I had panned my camera a bit to the right you would also see a lazy golden retriever in the yard watching them go by.

Good run today, although it was on the cool side at -11C/13F with a windchill of -20C/0F. I was well dressed and out of the wind for the most part and my 'bad' leg felt remarkably good for almost the entire run, only acting up a bit near the end. A few more good days like this and I'll be ready to start up with some actual training for Boston. The past month or so has really been more of a holding pattern of easy miles with various exercises and stretches for the hams but with no real hard running.

2008 is almost behind us and I did promise some sort of year-end review with pretty graphs and tables to keep some of you entertained or in some cases 'not'. With today's run my final 2009 total was 2506 miles in 278 days of running for an average of 48 miles/week. There were 2 main training cycles for my spring and fall marathons and only a couple of other races mixed in. The ups and downs were mostly planned but I did get off track due to my traveling in late Aug-Sept. There was no down-time due to injury or illness despite my hamstring issue which is ongoing since last year.
There were only 5 races in 2008 (something I'd like to improve on in 2009) with decent results for me but no PR's in the 'Since-I-turned-50 category'. Still, I like the age graded times and especially the 'virtual' sub-3 at PEI. Maybe in my dreams...

With a log book now going back 10 years, since 1st getting serious with this running thing, you can see my progress and total mileage since 1999. If you do the calculation the total cumulative miles is equal to about once around the world!? The only thing I'd take away from this is perhaps consistency over the years. Andrew would probably also want you to know that my PR for the marathon happened in 2006 which was the peak mileage year.

And finally for something to shoot for in 2009, here are my current over-50 PR's . I'm thinking that I should have a good shot at several of them if I can focus a bit on some speedwork and less marathon type training. The 1/2 marathon time looks especially vulnerable.

That's all I got for now except that I did my 100 Pushup Challenge exhaustion test today and am still stuck doing the same Week 6/Level 2 workouts over again after only managing 58 pushups. It might have been because I was tired from just finishing the 10 mile run but you wouldn't think your arms would be tired from running would you?

Take care and have a Happy New Year!