9 months and 273 days complete

Day 273 - September 30, 2009

Another month complete and I finished September with 125 miles to give me 1070 for the year. I'm a little nervous about October. The flu is ravaging this area - a nice mix of H1N1 and the regular variety. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that my kids won't bring it home, but I'm not optimistic. I'm going to do my best to at least get that mile in, even if I do come down with something, but I remember how hard it hit me in 2008 when it crushed my first streak.

Until then, I'll keep logging miles, washing my hands, and getting lots of vitamin C. I hope all the other streak runners can stay healthy too.

Rainy Day Run

Day 269 - September 26, 2009

A light rain has been falling all day and shows no signs of letting up. With no hope of avoiding it, I decided to get it over with. Six miles later, I'm glad I got it in. Bring on tomorrow and sunnier skies.

Seven Miles after work

Day 266 - September 23, 2009

Only 99 days to finish the first year of the current streak and break the old record of 364 days! I have to admit, as the amount of daylight each day gets shorter and shorter, I'm finding it harder to be excited about running. I just don't enjoy running in the dark and lately I've been doing a lot of late evening runs. Running in the morning has been tough to do with the sun coming up later and later each day. I've been telling myself I'll run at lunch or right after I get home, but inevitably, something comes up and it is after 8 pm before I get out the door.

Tonight, I wanted to run at least 5 miles and I knew that probably wasn't going to happen if I waited until after dinner, so I took my clothes and shoes to work so that I would run before coming home. Turned out to be a good idea and I ended up running just over 7 miles. I'm going to try and do this more often on Wednesdays, at least until daylight savings time ends.

Good weekend of running

Day 263 - September 20, 2009

The weather was pretty nice this weekend and I was able to work in two good runs this weekend. Saturday, I mapped out a 10 mile run and was looking forward to a long run. Note to self: don't believe everything you see on Google Maps. I mapped out a run that was supposed to start on Fredericksburg Road and turn west onto South River Road. Well, after running on that first road for much longer than I had expected, I came to a road that I knew was after South River Road. Now what do I do? I decided to just go with it look for an intersection somewhere near the 40 minute mark and then turn around. That worked out as I came to a crossroads at 40 minutes and 40 seconds. Nice. On the way back, I paid extra attention to see where I missed South River Road. Turns out, I didn't. The road doesn't actually connect to Fredericksburg Road. I'm just glad I wasn't running it from the other direction and end up at a dead end only a mile from where I planned to finish. I think I'll do a quick drive of the route next time I plan to do a loop I haven't run before. In the end, the run mapped out at 10.7 miles so all was fine.

Today, I gave my legs a break and just put in a relatively easy 4.2 mile recovery run. It was one of my favorite runs and it felt good to get out and loosen up.

I'll close today with a quick update on my YTD progress. I am currently on pace for 1430 miles which would be a personal best for a year. I think there is still a chance I can get to 1460 and average 4 miles per run for the year.

13 Years of Running and a lot of miles

Day 259 - September 16, 2009

According to my running log, I have now run over 14,000 miles in my lifetime. I'm pretty anal when it comes to my record keeping and I have running logs for 13 different years from 1990 - 2009 where I've recorded my times and distances. From 1992-1998, college and grad school got in the way of my running and I didn't run enough to bother logging my mileage. I doubt I ran 50 miles in those 6 years, so I don't count those years. I also know that I didn't log my miles the first year I ran in high school, which was 1989, but I doubt that amounted to even 400 miles in the 4 months of training.

Being a perspective guy, I needed some frame of reference for what 14,000 miles equates to. The first thing I thought of was in relation to the Earth's circumference. That was cool and all, but I'm no where near the 29,000 miles needed to get around the equator. But I could start in Moscow, run due east on the 56th parallel and end up where I started. That's pretty cool, but kind of like saying you can run all the way around the earth in less than 5 minutes when you are at the north pole.

Then I got the idea, what about the moon. I had no idea what the circumference of the moon was, so I Googled, and wikipedia had my answer. It turns out the distance around the moon is 6,786 miles. My 14,000 miles is enough to run all the way around the moon, TWICE!! That sounds way more awesome. So, that's what I'll be telling my friends tomorrow. I think they'll be really impressed - or they may just think I'm a bigger dork than they previously realized.

Either way, I think it is pretty cool that I can say I've run 14000 miles lifetime and I look forward to getting to 15000 in another 9 months or so. If you have the records, check and see what your lifetime totals are and let me know what that equates to. Then drop me a comment - I'd love to see what everyone has done.