2014 Running Review

I did not have any mileage goals with running at the beginning of 2014 other than to get out there and enjoy it. (I did have race related goals for the 5 races I did, as I have already detailed.)  I wanted to run 3 days a week.  I didn't want to overdo it and have my milk supply affected as I am nursing/pumping until my son is 1 year old.  That's it.

The plan that I am going to follow for marathon training starts Dec 28 and has 34.5 miles total for week 1. (More on that later.) So, naturally I was curious how far off that is from my current state of affairs.

Um...turns out PRETTY FAR.

I've never been great at keeping a running log but with a Garmin watch it is easy since it does it for you.  Upon reviewing the last 38 weeks of running and running reports on their website, it turns out I did not run nearly as much as I thought I did this year!

Here are the details:

I started running on Saturday February 15, ten weeks after the birth of my son.  Or rather, I started running with my Garmin at this point.  I honestly can't recall if I ran before that and if I did, I didn't record it.  So I'm going with that date.  It was 5 miles at 7:54 pace.  Not bad!  As it turns out, most of my mileage clusters on Fridays-Sundays.  This makes sense to me because I do not work outside of the home those days, so it is easiest to fit a run in those days.  Most of my "good" running weeks occur during the summer.  Again, this makes sense to me because those are the days with the most daylight - most of my weekly runs occur after 7 PM when my kids are in bed and weekend runs typically occur in the early afternoon when they nap.  I am definitely struggling to get runs in these days when it is dark at 4:45 PM!

So how many miles have I run in 2014 so far?  388.02

How many of the last 265 days have I run? 89 (34%)

How many days/week on average have I run in the weeks since February 9 (counting weeks starting on Sundays):  2.3  yikes.

How many miles/week, on average, have I run? 10.3

Let's categorize that:

weeks of 0 miles = 1
weeks of 1-5 miles total = 3
weeks of 6-10 miles total = 18
weeks of 11-15 miles total = 11
weeks of 16-20 miles total = 3
weeks of 20-25 miles total = 2

Average length of a run: 4.36 miles
Shortest run (other than not running) = 1.49 miles
Longest run = 9 miles

Total time spent running: 46 hours, 20 minutes and 16 seconds
Average Speed: 8.2 mph (7:19 pace)
Calories burned: 42,623 (makes me feel better about all of the Halloween candy I have inhaled

SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO  it looks like I have to start slowly ramping up my mileage and paying attention to this in the remaining 8 weeks before my plan begins.  Holy mother.  Why am I doing this again?!

I back calculated kind of sort of using the 10% rule and came up with these goals for the next 8 weeks:

This week: 19.5 miles
Week 2: 19.5 miles
Week 3: 21.4 miles
Week 4: 23.6 miles
Week 5: 25.9 miles
Week 6: 25.9 miles
Week 7: 28.5 miles
Week 8: 31.4 miles
Week 9/Week 1 of Plan: 34.5 miles

Some say the 10% rule isn't the greatest (according to this read) but that's what I am going with since I've used it before without problems.