Tuesday, February 03, 2009

Running in 2008

It's been a while since I posted on this blog (I've been busy on my so-called "professional" blog), but I wanted to share my year of running for 2008. Of course, it's now early February and this would have been more appropriate in early January, but, I guess, I missed my window of opportunity.

I've been using a Nike+ for almost 2 and a half years now, so 2008 was my first full calendar year using it, and it provided me with excellent motivation to "get out and run", I'll say! Because I've been using that, I also have a much more comprehensive view of what my running was like for the year.

According to the "2008 rundown" that the Nike+ website provides, my year looked something like:

  • I ran on a total of 235 days, covering 2,685,599 steps and just a bit over 1390 miles.
  • Monday was my favorite day to run during the week
  • My longest run was on October 19th (when I ran two legs of the Detroit Marathon)
  • I burned 178,370 calories (yet I did not seem to lose any weight that I can tell - I must have eaten quite a lot more, too!)
  • I "saved" 89.5 gallons of gas (not sure what that's supposed to mean, though)
In addition to those stats, I also ran probably about 10 road races. I was shooting for one a month but didn't make that goal. Of those races, 6 were 5K races, 2 were 10K races, 1 was a 2 mile race and then I ran in a relay team in the Detroit Marathon (my leg was the first leg - about 7.25 miles - and I ran along with a team mate in the second leg - another 5.5).

In those road races, I had personal bests in all distances. That's always gratifying, especially as I'm quite a bit older than my last stint of "significant" running (when I was in college).

Speaking of the Detroit Marathon - I also managed to pull together 2 relay teams (9 other runners) to take part, which is almost a more satisfying achievement than all of the running on my own. My run there also gave me the confidence to run a half marathon - I'm shooting for the Martian Marathon in early April to do that.

Looking forward to 2009 - One goal I have is to run even farther this year. Maybe I can hit 1500 miles?? I've also joined a number of new challenges on the Nike+ web site:
  • One challenge is to run 2009 KM in 2009 (I did more than that in 2008, so hopefully it's not too much of a stretch)
  • Another is to race "across America". Basically, run 3,260 miles. Currently, I'm 16th out of 343 participants. I figure that should take me at least into early next year.
  • Another even more ambitious challenge is the "Run around the Earth" - run 24,902 miles. I'm currently 32nd of 672 participants there. This one is definitely a multi-year challenge - if (and that's a big if) I can keep running any where near what I have this past year, it's still going to be, what, 15-20 years to run that far.
I also am hoping to continue PR-ing in my road races this year. I just ran the Super Bowl 5K this past Sunday and managed a new PR in the 5K, which was very cool.

I'm definitely looking forward hopefully to another good year in running, but time will tell.