This year, the weather was not great, again. It was only about 40, but it was also drizzling and rain was forecast for most of the day. That did not make me want to go run at 5:30 on New Year's Eve morning.
And the desire to stay in bed was compounded by the fact that my recent history was full of vacation, snow, and a massive hangover, so it had been over a week since I'd run a single mile.
Not exactly motivating or fun, but I had a message from my bestie saying "I cannot think of a better way to send off 2012! Just kidding, I can." But even if she had better ways to send out 2012, she still wanted to get in our traditional loop o' the lake.
So I bundled up and set out at 0-dark-30. It wasn't as rainy or cold as predicted (plenty cold, but not frigid, some rain but more occasional drizzle). We set off and ran a couple miles, but then one of our other friends (JD) had foot pain, so she planned to cut the run short.
Since my bestie, JD, and I all had to work that day, we'd set off to do our own loop solo a couple hours before the organized run that is a New Year's Eve loop of the lake for charity (not an organized race or anything, just a bunch of people who do it every year). Being New Year's Eve, being early, being cold, being rainy, all of it meant there was very little foot traffic at the lake and neither my local bestie nor I felt right about having JD run 2 miles solo back to her car.
So we all u-turned and ran back to the cars. It was nice for my bestie and me since we'd both overdressed. I'd worn short sleeves and a jacket, but I had a light long sleeve in the car. She'd just worn a jacket but also had long sleeves. So we both ditched our jackets, changed into long sleeves, and set out for an incomplete lake loop.
We considered doing a full loop, which would have put us around 13 miles for the morning, but since I hadn't run in more than a week (and that was just 5 miles of dreadmill) and since we both had to get to work, we decided that wasn't a good plan.
So instead we ran out another 2.5ish miles, and then came back, making our grand mileage total about 9.5, but breaking our many years of traditional NYE lake loops. But at least we got the same mileage that we did other years.
Anyway, in talking with my bestie, of course this time of year you reflect. She was disappointed that she wouldn't have a tally of her 2012 miles because she had two months of Garmin issues.
That inspired me to finally look at my Garmin 2012 in review statistics.
December 2012 was depressing -- less than 80 miles logged, but December is usually a recovery month for me (as is May).
2012 looked like this:
I should note that I wear my Garmin during boot camp, which is why my average pace is 4.1 mph -- lots of time of not moving at all for distance, just doing weights, whatever.
In comparison, I'm pretty much back to two years ago.
My running miles for the last few years have looked like this:
2009: 1284 miles
2010: 1400 miles + (I think 1450 or so)
2011: 1700 miles + (I think 1710 or so)
2012: 1457 miles (I managed to jog to my car in the parking lot on 12-31-12, so I counted that extra hundreth of a mile)
The big question is how will 2013 look?
I think it will likely be about 1400 miles, so I think if I make a mileage goal, that will be it. I want to be over 1150 for sure, which averages out to a 5k every day and seems like a reasonable fitness goal. But I don't think setting a goal of going over 1400 is realistic for 2013.
We have a new boot camp location that involves less running, so my mileage will take a hit there.
And I don't plan on doing any very long runs in the spring, and no spring marathon, so I should be very far away from my 2011 miles.
But I plan to train hard and run pretty high mileage when my training for the Berlin marathon starts around Memorial Day weekend.
The commuting miles should help too, though I'm not sure I'll keep that up all year.
