2012 year in review

It is now November, which means another year of running is in the books, and what a year it was, because 2012 is the year I began ultrarunning.  While I didn't hit some of my speed goals, I do consider this year very successful.  I ran several races I never ran before, ran some races that I now consider classics, and even ran up front in a few races as well.  During training I found new routes, re-discovered old ones, got lost a few times,  got up at 4 AM on vacation to run, and even did some last minute 20 milers.

I like to look at each year and think of what I learned or otherwise how I progressed as a runner.  In 2012 of course I started running ultras, having run marathons for several years if seemed the next logical step.  Not that I have conquered the marathon by any means (just see my results), but I was ready for something different and with how much I enjoy running why not go our there and run for longer?  At any rate, this year I was able to see just how much my body could handle week over week.  I peaked out at 70 mile weeks (65-70 miles) with my low weeks not dropping under 50.

I didn't do near the amount of speed work that I wanted, in fact I really didn't do any at all.  But despite that I was able to still improve me speed and discover how effective adding on more mileage would be for me.  I can only look back and wonder what my times would have looked like if I actually did speed work.  But understand that I hate it, track work is pain, I would rather run half the speed for 10 times longer, as evidenced by the fact that I just didn't do the work.

What I did do was take some video of a few of my routes.  I will try and do more of this next year as I frequently get questions from friends and family about my training runs, and as you can see Alaska truly is a beautiful place!