Northwest Ultrarunning

I’m looking forward to 2009 being over from a running perspective.  It is tough for me to quantitatively judge/compare one year of running versus another (at least since I got older and stopped setting PR’s).  But, suffice it to say, I had a pretty lousy year of running.  I’m willing to say it was one of my worst…at least worst without any major injuries.   I don’t quite know why…there were periods when things started to click.  But, it seemed like every time they started going well, something disrupted my running (usually this little thing called Microsoft Office 2010).  

A few big observations from this year (vs. other years):

• I didn’t race much (2 trail races, one road 10K, and a relay race…that’s about it..less than 20 miles total)
• I didn’t do many workouts (didn’t run with Tom Cotner’s Wednesday night group)
• I didn’t do many runs with anybody (other than my dog Achilles), especially given that Lynn (my wife) has been injured and unable to run this year

So, I’m going to do a few things differently this year.                             

I’m going to race often…and I’m going to force myself to gut out the races, even if I don’t feel like I’m in shape for them.  A good embarrassing race where you get passed by a guy that looks something like this (see picture to the right) and you’ll get your butt out the door for workouts and long runs.  It’s that simple. 

I’m going to not miss days.   I used to run for 30 or even 45 days consecutively.  I’d have some easy 3 miles days in there to recover…but, I didn’t miss.  What happened to that mindset?  Need to get that back…it not only got me in great shape, but it made me mentally tough. 

I’m going to show up for the Seattle Running Company Sunday morning trail runs.  Period.   My best run of the year happened to be the Kendall Katwalk run that I blogged about way back in August. 

Which brings me to my last thing for 2010…blog more frequently.  That may seem counterintuitive, but the more I think about running, the more I watch running, the more I write about running, the more I run.   So, look for more regular posts.  

Here’s to the end of 2009…and the beginning of a new decade.  As my IUP coach used to say, “Happy trails!”