Sports Year in Review
With my birthday coming up tomorrow and my workout for the day already in the books, I thought it would be a fun time to reflect on what I accomplished from a sports perspective in the last year.
Some things that I found particularly interesting - I biked, ran, swam, or did some other activity on my Garmin 350 out of 366 days this year. Sixteen days off in a year - a little more than one per month. That is an average of 66 minutes of activities per day (56 minutes per activity). That actually seems a bit higher than I would have expected. I do strive for an hour workout everyday, but there are definitely days where I'm lucky if I get 45. I guess the long sessions I had more than made up for it.
Of the 1540 miles I ran, 621 were indoors on my treadmill. In fact, I ran an entire marathon on my treadmill this year at the start of the pandemic. Living in the suburbs, I'm actually extremely lucky in that I am not restricted in my outdoor running by COVID. Typically I'm running on the treadmill due to weather or because of my kids (it's amazing how much less I'm using the running stroller since we had a second kid).
Not surprising in the least to me is that of the 141 cycling activities I had this year, all but 3 were indoors on the trainer. That's over 140 hours on the trainer this year. Not bad for a 4-year old $300 trainer.
Not surprising to anybody is my lack of swimming this year due to COVID. Only eight swims, and one of which was 100 meters in an inlet around a dock just so I could say I had an open water swim.
Pretty amazing that I spent 226 hours indoors doing endurance training this year.
So what did all that training get me? Well, I ran the Giant Acorn Triathlon (Olympic distance) and set a PR on that course. I ran the Marine Corps Marathon and had a terrible time (i.e., an experience, my finish time was mediocre, but much slower than I was aiming for). I ran the Jingle Dash 10k again and won first place overall again (I also won the 5k, but they only gave me one prize). I was aiming for a PR but couldn't muster it.
And that's it for my races. All of those took place in 2019. I did run a marathon on my treadmill in 2020 which was sort of a race, but I didn't treat it as a race (and it was by far the most pleasant marathon I have ever run). Ironically, I was only 2 minutes slower than the Marine Corps Marathon. Keeping the treadmill at 0% incline, no wind, no water logged shoes, A/C assisted humidity, and plenty of water and snacks helped in that regard for sure.
I'm not sure what my next year will bring. Hopefully some more real races. As of late, I've gotten a little lazy with my training. Instead I feel like I've been exercising a lot, breaking the cardinal rule of doing easy workouts easy and hard workouts hard. I'm doing everything in the middle and I feel like there is an impact as a result.
I do know in the next year I'd like to increase my flexibility and strength. My wife has been telling me literally for years that focusing on those areas will pay dividends in the rest of my training/racing. I know it to be true, but I just haven't been able to find a way to get into a rhythm like I have for running and biking, despite the fact that I have all of the tools I need at home to get it done. I just need to get in the mindset for it.
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