Hi friends–happy Wednesday! How’s the week going so far? Did anyone else get snow last night? Is Old Man Winter here to stay? We shall see!
So today, I want to talk number. I like numbers, metrics, stats. They can help ground you in what is happening–and I use them almost daily at work to make important business decisions. However, while numbers are important, they don’t always tell you the entire story. For example, Daily Mile sends out this great end of year wrap up on your miles, number of runs, etc.. Do, here are my 2015 run stats:
I like seeing the conciseness of this report, total miles, workouts, mileage by month, its simple and straight to the point, but what is this REALLY telling me other than numbers? This didn’t show that I participated in two separate 8 and 12-week fitness challenges that focused on heavy strength training and little (non running) cardio that made me a lot stronger than I have been in years. It also didn’t show that this is the first year since I started running in 2010, I didn’t end up in PT for injuries. Is that because I was a lot stronger? Because I didn’t run as many miles? Some other reason? I don’t know, but again…numbers only tell part of the story. HOWEVER—they are a great start for bench marking.
I actually didn’t think my miles would be too high this year. First, I didn’t sign up to run a race until the end of September. If I’m not signed up for a race, I’m not following a training plan, which means I am just going out for leisurely runs with not much focus. There is nothing wrong with this, it actually was a nice change of pace for me for a while, especially when work was crazy. Just being able to go for a run, however short or long I wanted to, was great for my sanity. However, for me, it doesn’t lend itself to racking up signficant milege. Again, this was fine since I wasn’t training for anything and had no need to hit a certain weekly mileage.
I had also made a conscious decision to decrease the number of days I was running because my body just wasn’t handling the running stress well in 2014 (I have seriously terrible calves.) I also decided to spend more of 2015 focusing on building strength since I was no longer teaching my beloved Group Power classes. I loved the two strength challenges I did, it pushed my limits in a different way than running does and I felt stronger and more confident. That counts for something, right?
So, I wasn’t at all surprised that my mileage wasn’t as high as in some other years. However, I have some new goals for 2016….
My awesome fellow toddler Mama, reading, running, and all around awesome friend Christen asked if I would be interested in running the year with her (and a few other Moms.) Since I wanted a running goal (and some races) to log more miles this year, I said, sure, why not. So we signed up for Run the Year 2016, came up with our team name 2016 Child Free Miles (#2016CFM) and are logging our miles.
My main goal with this challenge is to run 1,000 miles in 2016. As much as I’d love to run 2,016 miles on my own, my body just doesn’t allow that kind of mileage, so I think 1,000 is more doable–but who knows if this is feasible. It works out to about 3 miles a day, but I can’t run everyday, so we will see how this all plays out. I’m training for a half marathon in March so getting my mileage in now is pretty easy…I just follow the plan! I am signed up for an 8-10 mile adventure race in August and I have my eyes on a few other races throughout the year. If they fit into our family schedule, I would like to do them…but all of that is up in the air.
I think it’s good to have goals, but I am also not going to beat myself up about them. I was TERRIBLE at balancing work, fitness and family last year (and that is a major focus of mine this year that comes ahead of anything else I am doing) so we will see how the pieces fall–wish me luck!
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Question of the day
Anyone else doing the Run the Year challenge? Other fitness goals? Life goals?
