This has been the best disappointing year ever!  200 miles per month averaged, despite barely creeping near 200 miles a couple of times the last few months.

A Running History

In 2006, I started running.  By virtue of every race being my first at that distance, I set 4 personal records [5km, 15km, half-marathon, 4km].  I ran my first race, a 5k race, in 33:44.  That’s a pace of 10:52 per mile, which is a slower pace than my worst marathon finish out of 8 marathons.

In 2007, I set 9 PRs.  10 if you count the 9.2 mile leg that I ran for a fundraising relay race.  Among those were:

• 2 – 4 miler PRs
• 2 – 5k PRs
• 1 – 10k PR
• 1 – 10 miler PR
• 2 – half marathon PRs
• 1 – marathon PR

In 2008, I started the year on fire and feeling invincible.  I ran a PR in every race [6 total] through my second marathon in May.  I beat my first marathon time by almost 55 minutes.  I followed up that marathon performance with my worst marathon performance ever, 8 minutes slower than my first marathon time.  Angry about my performance, I destructively ran hard, started getting injured, and proceeded to insure a prolonged injury by trying to bounce back too hard after a few days off.  I recovered from my injury and hobbled through a marathon, and went on to run a 5k PR a couple of weeks later.

In 2009, I quickly injured myself out of being able to run any races until late spring [a 5k].  From there, I slowly built up mileage, peaking out at 70 and 80 miles per week toward a November and December marathon.  I PRed in November and had a fairly strong marathon in December.

2010

This year, I had the usual trifecta of PRs in the Louisville Triple Crown of Running — 5k, 10k, 10 miler.  Unfortunately, my 10 miler performance had me horribly disappointed.  I had mediocre and uninspired training for the next few weeks leading up to my spring marathon, with a stomach bug circulating in the house the week prior to the marathon.  I never got noticeably sick, but I didn’t have the guts [literally] to finish the marathon.

Since my spring marathon attempt was little more than a 16 mile long run, I went straight back into marathon training, setting my sights on Chicago-10/10/10.  I ran a 5k race after a high mileage week [80 miles?] in early August, and broke down during the subsequent 60 mile weeks.  I took 3 weeks off with lots of stationary cycling, and managed to get back into the swing of training 5 weeks before the marathon.  Chicago was a disaster.

Again, I tentatively trained through the marathon.  This time the Flying Monkey marathon was up.  Not exactly the “redemption opportunity” that one would hope for after crashing and burning on a flat marathon course.  Nonetheless, I ran 22 minutes faster than my previous Flying Monkey marathon and 17 minutes faster than my Chicago time.  While 4:08 is not exactly a good marathon outing for me, I was still very happy with some level of redemption for the year.

With Monkey over, I was a measly 140 miles or so from 2400 miles for the year with 5 weeks to go.  35 miles per week was going to be easy, even with travel, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.  Then a nasty little sinus infection struck the day after Thanksgiving.  I’ve felt bad before and managed to go out and trudge through 15-20 miles.  I did a 22 miler with a sinus infection two weeks before my first marathon.  It felt bad, but not much worse than sitting around feeling miserable.

This time, I’ve had two weekends where I just didn’t care to start running a long run, much less go the full distance.  I’ve had a fairly persistent cough for 5 weeks.  The doctor last weekend had me x-rayed for pneumonia [two opinions later, both came back negative].  The cough is mostly on its last legs now, but I’ve had to take things far easier than I can stand.  Nonetheless, 2400 miles are in the books.  150 miles more than last year.