2010 Year In Review

So, here it is. The END! (of 2010, that is...) It's with a bit of a melancholy feeling that I completed my final training run of this year. Perhaps it was the treadmill that made it so as I plodded through an easy 5 miles (8km) at an average pace of 5:18/km. Or maybe it was the fact that I am already looking toward the next 365 days of training and am well on the road to forgetting the accomplishments of 2010. Either way, it is what it is.

It seems not that long ago that I built up my training plan with the goal of running the entire year injury free, and THAT was the main goal. To quote from my second post of 2010 back on January 8th:

"I really want to have a consistent year of running rather than the up and down, off and on sort of thing that happened throughout 2009."

I am very pleased to report: GOAL ACCOMPLISHED!!!

Of course, there were carrots that helped me along the way. The main one was to complete my first marathon. I did that too! Although I broke down in the last ten kilometres of the race it gave me the confidence to shoot for bigger and better things in 2011 (though that will be a different post on this here blog). I also ran my first Half Marathon and had a great time following the 1:45 pace bunny on my way to a finishing time that was much faster than I thought I could achieve.

It was not a year of many races, and I believe that helped me to stay on course. Instead, 2010 was a year of monotonous slow running up until the middle of November when I started to pick up the pace while experimenting with faster turnover. I focused on a weekly average mileage goal for each month and built from 25km/week in January up to over 50km/week by the Summer. It was a good strategy because it allowed me to completely ignore my pace. As a result, I never missed a week of running and skipped only three training runs due to aches and pains over the entire year.

And what's a recap without some stats? Just a bunch of prose, if you ask me. So here's my bullet list of stat like things:

• I ran 238 times
• I ran 2326.15km (1445.4 miles) (compared to 975.5km in 2009)
• I averaged 193.85km per month (compared to 81.29km in 2009)
• I averaged 44.61km per week (27.7 miles) for the year
• I averaged 9.77km per run (compared to who knows what in 2009)
• I managed 19 times to go over 50km for the week (compared to just once in 2009)
• I managed twice to get over 80km (50 miles) for weekly mileage
• Every month was over 100km, and 5 months were over 200km
• I worked out 199 times at the gym and shook the runner's knee that plagued me for more than a year
• Overall I managed 486 "activities" (including running, weights, walking, and stationary cycling), which averaged out to 1.33 activities per day! (And that doesn't include biking to and from work almost every weekday.)
• And, most importantly, I lived to blog about it!

In short, 2010 was a memorable year that served to only whet my appetite for more. I have to be conscious of my health going forward and continue to stay as conservative as possible, but I am very much looking forward to going after more aggressive goals that are based a bit more on speed rather than distance in 2011.

Next up is to design a training plan for the next year, and to set some specific targets to shoot for. I just hope that the fine folks at the BAA don't mess too much with the BQ standards (as rumoured). The 3:15 marathon is a big goal for me and one I feel I have an outside chance of achieving. If it is made much more difficult I'll be depressed (for a short while)...