Posts Tagged ‘Holiday Run Streak’

When the Runner’s World Holiday Run Streak came to an end Sunday, the next day I did what just felt right — I went for a run. Then I went for another run Tuesday. 41 straight days of running.

Today, though, as I shift my focus to Shamrock Half Marathon training, the streak comes to an end. I thought about extending it to 50 days, but that mark is no more special to me than 41. In fact, streaking isn’t all that “special” of a thing to me, but it’s a lot of fun. Those people who go for 100 days or 1,000 days, I completely understand why — it’s just not for me.

Here are some highlights of running 41 straight days:

• 3 races (the streak started with the Turkey Trot; Christmas Classic; and Jingle Bell Run)
• 0 consecutive days of only 1-1.9 miles for “rest” days
• 114.4 miles
• Weather ranging from wind chills in the teens (yesterday) to about 60
• 5 different cities and 2 states — Lynchburg, Bedford, Roanoke, and Richmond, Va.; and Asheboro, N.C.
• Wide range of times of day, from as early as about 6:30 a.m. to as late as 9 p.m.
• Ran in 2 different years
• Hit 2 big milestones — hit 1,000 miles for the year Dec. 17 and passed the most miles ever in a year on Dec. 21.

In the past couple of weeks, I spent a lot of time reflecting on a great year. Now that the calendar has flipped to a new month and a new year, there’s a feeling of starting something new. The great thing about this year is I don’t have to start over like I did last year.

The Runner’s World Holiday Run Streak — running at least a mile every day from Thanksgiving through New Year’s Day — gave me some solid miles and solid runs that makes for an easy transition into training mode. I actually hit day 40 today of consecutive running days, but today was different — the first “official” day of training for the Shamrock Half Marathon.

So with this run, my focus shifts to the year ahead, and here are 12 thoughts for the next 12 months that are on my mind.

1. My “A” goal for the first quarter is a PR in the Shamrock Half Marathon on March 18 in Virginia Beach. Two winters ago I trained in one of the roughest winters around here in years and still managed to set a PR. This year is looking much better weather-wise (although I would love some snow at some point), and my mind will once again be set on beating my best time, which is 1:42.52.

2. I’m still undecided on whether or not I’ll run a marathon in the spring.

3. I want to get my weight to under 180. I don’t know what it is right now, but my letter to myself the other day is something I’m staying focused on. Weight is just a number, I know, but if I could stop eating stupid, I know that my race times would drop even more.

4. Barring injury, I will pass 5,000 running miles since the beginning of 2007 (I didn’t log miles from 2004-06). I have about 750 to go, so that should happen in late summer/early fall.

5. Speaking of mileage, I will not set an overall mileage goal again this year. It was definitely a great thing to focus on in 2010, but I liked how last year went with my “finish it stronger than I begin it” goal — a little more than 400 in the first half of the year and a little more than 600 in the second half. Right now I just want to run; mileage goals will be secondary whenever I realize I’m close to something.

6. I will buy a new GPS watch sometime this year.

7. It’s weird in January to think of things that will happen 11 months from now. It’s that feeling of that time will never get here. I know it will, so assuming everything goes like I hope, I want to return to the Christmas Classic 5k in Bedford and break 22 minutes.

9. I’m going to start riding my bike at least once a week when the weather warms up and I have a little more daylight in the evenings. I fully intend to continue to increase my cross training this year and I want the bike to be a part of it.

10. My sister is running the Monument Avenue 10k at the end of March. I’m not sure how much I had to do with talking her into doing it, but it will be just her second race. I’m really looking forward to her completing it.

11. When May rolls around, I will hit the campaign trail hard for Relay for Life where I will once again run lots of laps for a great cause. My donation page is active now.

12. I have failed to mention it on here, but I am doing the Mountain Junkies’ Frozen Toe 10k this weekend in Roanoke. It will be the first race I’ve ever done in January, but it certainly won’t be a race for time. It’s a trail race around Roanoke Mountain with some generous elevation change. Similar to the Trail Nut 10k last year, I’m looking at this event to gain trail running experience. I think it will be a great way to kick off the year.

Image: Idea go / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

These past couple of weeks have been fun reflecting on what happened in 2011. Today I bring you the last of my lists with my top running moments of the year.

Narrowing down the top 5 running moments of the year is hard, but honestly anything longer than that is boring and diluted. Anything beyond 5 is like having honorable mentions, which I will not do. This list is completely different from my top 5 racing moments of 2011 – this list is more broad and not necessarily as focused on one specific moment.

5. Monument Avenue 10k
While this was my No. 1 racing moment this year, it’s definitely not the top running moment. It was huge though, but from an overall perspective it wasn’t as important to me as other things on this list. Gradually building my mileage in the first quarter of the year, getting back to the start line and then setting a PR, though, still make this a great moment.

4. The Holiday Run Streak
In a few months, perhaps this will be higher on the list; it’s actually tough for me to include this here as it’s happening now with another day to go. That said, my running streak through Jan. 1 is teaching me a lot about running for the sake of running. It’s fun to just go out and run with training pretty far from my mind. I’ve run in the rain, in the wind, in awkwardly warm December weather, through neighborhoods brightly lit by Christmas lights; and included a few races to close out the year.

3. “Most ever” moments
It’s important to me to not confuse “most ever” with “best ever.” When it comes to this year, I won’t touch the “best ever” phrase. I’ll just use “best so far.” And with that nod comes many “most ever” moments this year — most weekly mileage (41.5 from Sept. 5-11); most ever miles in a month (135 in August and September); most ever mileage in a year (1,040.4); most ever races (13); and most ever consecutive races (4 in 4 weeks) are the highlights.

2. Watching my son race
I’ve learned a lot this year about running by watching my son. He has fun; he notices things like barns off in the distance in a race; and he runs just to run. If you don’t have kids, I highly suggest that you watch a kids race. Not the one with 10 or 11 year olds – the real kids race where everyone is under 5 years old. You’ll learn a lot.

After the euphoria of Christmas is over, Dec. 26 usually has this weird hungover feeling to it. The keyword is usually.

With my son now 3 and experiencing the joy of the season in so many ways, Christmas is once again more than a day. It’s a big event leading up to it — driving around looking at Christmas lights, numerous times seeing a Santa that knows his name, and decorating an Advent tree every night were just a few of the highlights this month.

And today, the day after, was a huge day for him to spend a gift card from his birthday to buy more train tracks — it’s like he had a creative explosion in the living room putting track together in so many ways.

The past few weeks of my normal everyday life reminds me so much of training for a race — there’s so much buildup for one event, but what happens after that event is just as important as everything else. I wish people’s Christmas spirit lasted longer and that everyone could be as happy and care-free as a 3-year-old, but I think what’s important is that I try to soak all this in and do what I can to keep those feelings going.

I know this may not make much sense, but the day after Christmas always puts a lot of things on my mind. I’ve never really used this blog as an outlet for that before, but these are things I think about while running, especially this year doing the Holiday Run Streak. Don’t worry, I have some more lists to share this week as I continue to reflect on 2011.

Running 1,000 miles this year was never on my radar, especially after running less than 50 miles in January and even less in February.

Today, as I neared a quarter mile to go to 1,000, I was forced to stop …

I’ve run across these tracks probably a dozen times this year and not once did I encounter a train. It struck me as being pretty funny that I had to wait a couple of minutes to run a little farther before hitting 2.2 miles into my run, marking my 1,000th mile. And, that too, was kind of funny as I hit the mark in front of the church I went to much of my life (Main Street United Methodist Church in Bedford).

My running log from today - miles, shoes and total 2011 miles.

Unlike last year, I hit this mark today healthy and more confident than ever about what’s ahead. In the final couple of weeks of 2011, I’ll do some reflecting on what’s happened in these 1,000+ miles — this has been a special year in so many ways and I’m looking forward to taking some time and reading posts I haven’t visited in a while.

While I reflect, though, I’ll keep running. It’s day 24 of the Runner’s World Holiday Run Streak — I have quite a bit more running to do and some early 2012 goals to start getting serious about.

In these last two weeks I’ll continue to hit milestones I’ve never seen with the most miles ever in a year and my most consecutive running days.

Until then, I’m going to celebrate a bit tonight.

It’s funny to think that at two different times since I started running that I went more than a year between 5ks. Now I can say I have run four 5k races in four weeks. It’s not something I highly recommend, but it’s been fun.

The fourth 5k this past Saturday was similar to the first one in this series — my main goal was to help pace Josh, a co-worker of mine, while still getting in a very solid run at the Jingle Bell Run/Walk for Arthritis in Roanoke. I was hoping to push Josh to a PR on Saturday, but he just couldn’t quite hold the pace for the final mile.

Josh ran a 24:23, just shy of his PR this past summer. His PR was when I set my PR at the Fab 5k; this course in Roanoke on Saturday was completely different with rolling hills and a couple of tough bridges.

I ran with him for about 2.5 miles, then went ahead with a strong finish myself at 24:08. I would have liked to have gotten to under 24 minutes for the both of us, but on this course I am more than pleased with what we both did. I think with the right conditions on a flatter course Josh is poised to break 24 minutes.

The past four weeks have been a tremendous learning experience for me, as I not only set a personal record for races in consecutive weeks, I also added the Runner’s World Holiday Run Streak into the mix. Here are some things I’ve taken from this:

• It’s perfectly fine to leave something on the course. Yes, I’ve done that before, but it’s been way too long since I ran a race for the fun of running a race and enjoying great company.
• If you’re going to run races in consecutive weeks, make only one of them your “A” race. This approached worked well for me with setting my course record in the Christmas Classic.
• Pacing another runner is an awesome opportunity to take the pressure off yourself. I hope to do more of this in the future. Saturday was fun for me because I didn’t care about my time. Thinking about the “what could have been” element of race like the one on Saturday was quite enjoyable and presents a challenge should I do this race next year.
• Lastly, these four 5ks have made me realize that the distance of 3.1 miles is the hardest distance to race. I used to think it was the 10k, but it’s now this for me. Those precious seconds you may lose at the beginning weaving around slower runners or not hitting a hill exactly right are the make-or-break points with setting personal records for a 5k.

Now that this challenge is done, all that is left is 13.1 miles for 1,000 running miles this year …

November may very well have been my successful running month ever, but not because of a race or certain mileage. The fact that I could run injury-free the month after doing a marathon means more to me than any PR or mileage mark ever well.

After two previous marathons that left me questioning everything about running, my post-Baltimore Marathon experience has me more excited than ever before about what’s ahead.

November was a great month to run just to run, something I haven’t done in a while. It was fun to run however far I felt like going, how fast or slow I felt like going and to do a couple of races with no major pressure.

I ended November with 67.7 miles and now stand at 957 miles for the year. After today’s run I now have less than 40 to go before hitting 1,000 miles.

This month will be somewhat of a transition from running for the fun of it to getting back into training mode for the Shamrock Half Marathon. It’s nice to not be as concerned about building my mileage again — I have a great base that I can just feed off of to quickly get to double digit runs in January. I feel like I can put my focus on quality runs rather than certain miles. That said, I fully expect more mileage for the upcoming training period than I have before for a half.

I also need to get my diet under control this month. December is ridiculously hard to do that, but my biggest focus will be not going overboard. With the Holiday Run Streak in tact, running won’t be an issue — it’s the cross training things I still need to do, as well as putting down seconds of the great holiday meals.

Image: jscreationzs / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

My dog, Duke, joined me for a few miles at the Peaks of Otter today.

In the past two years, one of my top moments was running at least a mile every day for a month. I learned a lot about myself in April 2010 with how to push through tired legs if I needed to, how to still get effective rest even without taking a full rest day, and how to just enjoy running.

Day 2: Peace and quiet around the lake.

I’ve thought a lot about doing a streak since then. At one point earlier this year I made it a goal to streak in June, but I pulled out of those thoughts in the last minute as I continued to build mileage after my injury.

As the end of the year approaches and I stay focused on the “end it stronger than I begin it” goal, my eyes lit up at the inaugural Runner’s World Holiday Run Streak — simply run at least a mile every day between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day to take part.

Even though I have cut back on my mileage this month, I am becoming more and more passionate about running — I know how the highs and lows can come and go, and right now I am eager to carry this high into 2012. To me, the Holiday Run Streak is a perfect opportunity to discover new things with running and to push myself at a time of the year that I’ve never really pushed myself.

My plan is as easy as the streak sounds — on my normal non-running days, I’ll stick to the 1-mile approach for a rest day. If I have to get up early to run a mile I’ll do it; if I have to wait until 10 p.m., I’ll do that too. If it rains or snows or ices, I’ll run. On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, I’ll run. If I drink too much, I’ll still run the next day.

Yesterday’s 5k and a run at the base of the Peaks of Otter this morning were a great way to kick this off. I’m excited about what this streak will hold as I head for two more 5ks in the next couple of weeks, as well as crossing 1,000 running miles soon. It’s an absolutely perfect way to end 2011.