January 2012 - the year so far

I suspected that this time of year was going to me the make or break of my new found exercise & food regimen. The festive had not been kind to me, or a little too kind depending on how you look at it. Taking into account the weight that I manged to gain and the break in my regular exercise regimen, coupled with how crappy Michigan weather gets in January, I was in for a mental and physical battle over the first two or three months of the year. I'll start with some stats, from my old friend Endomondo and take it from there.

Distance & time so far

• Running - 29.5 miles (47.5km) in 4hrs 30mins
• Exercise bike - 124 miles (200km) in 5hrs 50mins
• Yoga/ core - 2hrsmins
• Walking - 69 miles (111km) in 17hrs 30mins

For some additional motivation I have already signed up for a couple of races, a 5km on Superbowl Sunday in Novi and the Sham Rock 'n' Roll Run around St Patrick's Day.

No doubt about it though, January 2012 has been the least amount of miles I've run, since July 2011, not terribly impressive.

How to fix it...

My old buddy, Endomondo, has a cool feature called Challenges which you sign up for. These challenges allow you to monitor your progress based on any number of different criteria compared to any number of other Endomondo user, for example number of miles for the year. most calories burned in January in cycling, etc. I have signed up or have been invited to sign up my Endomondo friends, for a few of these challenges, the big one for me being 'Run 500 miles in 2012'. In 2011, starting in May, I ran a total of 254 miles (409km), so this might be just doable, but not at my current rate. To do 500 miles in a year, means on average 1.4 miles (2.25km) per day, which in the cold, wet weather, isn't too inviting, but I will be doing more running in the better weather, so not too concerned, just a little disappointed.

Minimalist, how goes it?

So I started running in my VFF's on January 6th, just a wee short one to begin with, 0.6 miles (1km), while making a conscious effort to shorten my stride and land on my mid-foot. After run #1 I realised that while attempting to land mid-foot, I'm actually landing on the balls of my feet, so much so that it feels like I am tip-toeing along and my achilles tendon was really quite tender. The following day I was planning on going for my normal Walled Lake run of about 4.7 miles (7.5km), so I thought I take the VFF's as well and do a km beforehand, which seemed to go well and was on a better surface than the previous day. That same, evening, flushed with confidence, I took the kids our for the first run of the quest for the Martian Marathon, again in the VFF's, this time the achilles tendon, complained a little more.

Finally on 1/29, we decided to take the kids to the swimming pool at a local high school, that I also knew had a short indoor track (9 laps = 1 mile). After getting everyone changed and situated, I decided to go see what the small track was all about.