Training Log Archive: Ari-oIn the 7 days ending Jan 3, 2021:
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Sunday Jan 3, 2021 #
2 PM
Trail Run 57:17 [1] 6.09 mi (9:24 / mi) +235m 8:24 / mi
ahr:140 max:192
Off to Blue Hills, as the storm fizzled. I almost went up to Jackson (35k groomed, apparently) but that seemed like way too much driving. So I went on a nice trail run instead. Out in the woods, on trails I can run 9 minute miles easily on. The Blue Hills are nice. BHE was completely uncrowded, saw fewer than a dozen people. Ran with a map, too, and if it doesn't snow I guess I'll just have to buzz down there and run old Traverse courses.
I kind of drew a Strava art fish.
I kind of drew a Strava art fish.
C • fish 3
Saturday Jan 2, 2021 #
Note
Year (decade?) in review!
It comes that time where I can look back at a non-arbitrary period of time (one year) on an arbitrary date (in the middle of ski season) and, uh, see what happened.
It is also, as pointed out recently, a time when I have reached 10 years of tracking all of my training miles (if not hours) as well as non-training miles, and see what happened there, too. And to post some images somewhere so that I can source them in a (long) Attackpoint thread.
So, here it is.
2020 began like most other years. There was snow and skiing, then it was 70, then there was more snow, some races, some short runs between calls and meetings; a normal year. I was keeping my running miles decently up, getting ready for a race in April, and the Birkie happened and it was beyond glorious (all of the post-race podcasts are up now if you want to be transported to a time when people were coughing in crowded bars and we should have known better). I even bought the fancy new Nike shoes for Boston. They are still in the box.
Then March happened. March 10 was D-Day, I ran 16 miles on a Tuesday morning, New Bedford was canceled that afternoon, and a week later I was flying, sight-unseen, to California, for three months. Where I ran a lot, attempted to surf, and didn't get covid. Then back to New England, Maine mostly, for the summer, running and mountains and some rollerskiing, still didn't get covid, and then back to/towards Boston for some skiing this winter. Not a lot of intensity, but a lot of hours. It turned out that my training wound up being pretty good 100 mile training, so I did that, pretty successfully.
Some statistics:
Races: Jan: 7. Feb: 6. Mar: 2. Rest of year: 1.
Hours by month (* highest of any month):
39, 32*, 37, 40*, 35*, 48, 50*, 49, 47, 60*, 46*, 50*
I guess now it's chart time, isn't it!
Here are hours:
Previous years have mostly been parallel, despite different life experiences (work, grad school, etc). 2016 lagged for a while because I lost two weeks of training, but otherwise they were well-clustered and seemed to converge at the end. 2020 followed suit at first, but then accelerated in mid-March, and especially starting in June. Pretty easy to find the 100 miler, and other big days (two Pemis, a Presi, and 36 for 36). And also the "all the snow melted and I'm sitting at 532 hours" in the last week of December. A normal trip to MSA would have had me close to 550!
Hours per day (28 day average)
There's some rhythm to my hours per day training, with relatively high numbers during ski season, lower during mud season/marathon tapering, averaging around an hour per day except some summers where I take training trips. Notable low in 2016 when I had half a month of zero, and 2019 spring, when grad school hit. Relatively low numbers training for road races, since the miles don't require as many hours and, uh, I don't do enough cross training (rollerskiing in the fall). 2020 differs in that I was at 2h/day for the second half of the year.
I can do the same thing with total meters ascended
In 2018, I made a concerted push for 100km, and made it during the final days at MSA. I got ahead of the line in 2020, but like most years fell off during the spring, which is a combination of marathon training and wet trails. I've generally been quite clustered for the first half of the year, in fact, although big trail running trips stand out: 2019 in the Alps, 2016 and 2017 in Colorado, and it's pretty easy to find big days in the Whites. 2020's slope never got steep over a long period of time, but I just found more time in the mountains.
This is even more apparent over a four-week period (I've added in the logged part of 2013 here). 2019 in Cham stands out, as many mountains were run up. Then is 2013 at Lakes. In fact, most of 2020 wasn't the highest period on record, but from June to November I stayed at 400m per day (or so), more than the 273 I needed to average. I had an extra day, too, although I crossed 100km with a month to spare.
Some notable low periods: Marathon tapers, Summer in Chicago (2016 and 2017 especially). It's flat there.
In 2018, I tracked how many m I'd need, per day, to reach 100km. After a flat summer, I had to average well more than the mean, but made it. In 2019, I was near the mean, but marathon training slowed it down. No such problem in 2020! I was in the vicinity of 2019 until September, but mountains in the fall made quick work of that.
So that's the training log overall. But what about specific activities? What about non-training travel? I'll move over to my 10-year Google Doc for that one! A little background: after a kind-of-crazy trip to ski the Double Birkie while TSAstatus (RIP) was going viral, I decided I should keep track of my miles, by day and by mode. That was 10 years ago, and I've been entering mileage, rounded to the nearest half mile, since. The 2011 data is a bit janky as my methodology has changed (mostly as to what counts as transport versus exercise/pleasure; most anything in the log is in the latter category) but it's mostly been the same since. And yes, SGB does something similar.
So let's get started with something easy: running miles! Well, foot training, so running, O, hiking, trail running, etc.
Before this year, I'd never (*, which I'll address momentarily) run more than 1400 miles in a year. This year, I had covered 1400 miles by September 1. I hewed close to previous years until April 1, but then instead of tapering for a marathon, I just kept going. By June, 2000 seemed reasonable, and by September I was tracking how many miles per day I'd need to hit 2000. Which I eventually attained. One note: by my online tracker, rounding to the nearest 0.5, I got 2029.5, and by Attackpoint, I got 2039.5. Close enough.
This is even easier to see on the 30 day moving average. During March, I paralleled other Boston training years quite well, but instead of going into a taper, I just kept going. I peaked at almost 9 miles per day in April, kept above any previous year until August, and then had another, even higher peak in the fall. Gee I wonder why.
About that *: This is not the greatest number of miles run in any year for me! I have data from 2006, when I hiked the Appalachian Trail. So I can overlay that, too. Even with just trail miles, I was at 2200, and averaged 18 miles per day most of that.
We don't have to stop with running. How about skiing? It's worth adding skiing and rollerskiing together, right? And not breaking the season in January, but rather the ceremonial beginning of the season, May 1. This year, I got ahead of the game rollerskiing in the summer, but slacked off in the fall. I don't expect a big winter mile season, what with poor snow so far, no MSA, and Weston restrictions. But we'll see.
What about days off? I keep track of those too. Well, I keep track of days with zero miles, so I can keep track of rest days #restdaybrags:
Only once before 2020, in 2013, did I go a month without a rest day. In 2020 I had a two-month run streak, and another month-long training streak in July. Somehow, I came away uninjured. Biggest #restdaybrags? Post 2016 marathon, 2015 December when I sprained my ankle, and 2019 when I was writing a thesis.
Now, how about non-training transportation? I have that, too! Here's walking:
You can see the refined methodology over time. In 2011, I defined hiking in and out of the huts (Aug-Oct) as transportation; in 2013, it was defined as exercise (loggable) so instead of particularly high it was quite low. I'm not about to go back and recategorize things; it would be a lot of guesswork. Not only did I not have a log, I didn't even have a Strava! I was entering distances based on the White Mountain Guide.
It's interesting how seemingly unlike years cluster. 2014, 2015, 2018 and 2020 were all different life situations, with similar amounts of walking for transport. 2019 was quite high, and 2020 was shaping up to parallel 2019 until covid. Getting a bike in San Diego and living in Maine did not make for a lot of walking for transport.
Now, biking (note: I don't do enough bike training for fun charts).
Like walking, the 2020 lifestyle did not lend itself to a lot of biking. Why were 2015 and 2016 high? My commute got longer, and I made it most days by bike. (Still not very long!) The grad school years were shorter. We'll see how 2021 shapes up. Still, I would guess there were years in the Twin Cities when I biked a good deal more than this with a longer bike commute and at least one month I cracked 300 miles for work trips alone.
Motorized transport? Yes, we have that too. Let's start with all transit use, and then breaking it down by bus and train:
Here there's a bit of a split. Some years most of the travel comes from a few trips. Other years, it comes from commuting, especially summers in Chicago when I had a longer, mostly transit commute.
How about driving and riding in cars? Got that, too, and split by driving alone (SOV) or with someone else (HOV). I think SGB keeps track of how many people were in the vehicle! Pretty much anything which was a 15-passenger van or less was a car, and anything bigger would be in transit. School buses for races are still transit, by this count.
Driving and HOV include several long road trips, in 2016, 2017 and 2019; it's easy to pick those out. I haven't done a 1000-mile solo road trip though, so SOV has more seasonal rhythm to it and has a four-week chart, note how driving is high in winter (ski season), low during mud season, high during summer and fall, low during stick season, and high again when ski season rolls around.
Other notes: 2013 I had a job which required a lot of driving. It's also easy to pick out flat periods: time in the huts in 2013, summers in Chicago (2016 to 2018), 2019 in Europe, and 2020 in covid. 2020 was way behind until I came back to the East Coast.
What have we left out? Air travel!
My highest year driving was 2013, the only year over 20,000 miles. But my highest travel year? Good ol' 2019, at nearly 60,000! To the skies we go! This includes all travel but air trips are pretty easy to pick out. Two patterns stand out. Late February has the Birkie trips. Non-status years stand out: 2013 to 2016. And I am master of the last-minute mileage run! Whether it was SFO and PHX on DL in 2011, ANC on DL in 2012, or the last three years of ski-trip-mileage-runs (BZN, DEN, RNO on UA), I've taken to the skies in early December to find some snow, and some miles. But not so much in 2020. The higher y-axis here flattens out time in SAN quite a bit, and without any need (but certainly with desire) to get on an aircraft, 2020 winds up as the lowest year in quite some time.
Hopefully I'll be able to take to the skies, safely, in 2021.
It comes that time where I can look back at a non-arbitrary period of time (one year) on an arbitrary date (in the middle of ski season) and, uh, see what happened.
It is also, as pointed out recently, a time when I have reached 10 years of tracking all of my training miles (if not hours) as well as non-training miles, and see what happened there, too. And to post some images somewhere so that I can source them in a (long) Attackpoint thread.
So, here it is.
2020 began like most other years. There was snow and skiing, then it was 70, then there was more snow, some races, some short runs between calls and meetings; a normal year. I was keeping my running miles decently up, getting ready for a race in April, and the Birkie happened and it was beyond glorious (all of the post-race podcasts are up now if you want to be transported to a time when people were coughing in crowded bars and we should have known better). I even bought the fancy new Nike shoes for Boston. They are still in the box.
Then March happened. March 10 was D-Day, I ran 16 miles on a Tuesday morning, New Bedford was canceled that afternoon, and a week later I was flying, sight-unseen, to California, for three months. Where I ran a lot, attempted to surf, and didn't get covid. Then back to New England, Maine mostly, for the summer, running and mountains and some rollerskiing, still didn't get covid, and then back to/towards Boston for some skiing this winter. Not a lot of intensity, but a lot of hours. It turned out that my training wound up being pretty good 100 mile training, so I did that, pretty successfully.
Some statistics:
Races: Jan: 7. Feb: 6. Mar: 2. Rest of year: 1.
Hours by month (* highest of any month):
39, 32*, 37, 40*, 35*, 48, 50*, 49, 47, 60*, 46*, 50*
I guess now it's chart time, isn't it!
Here are hours:
Previous years have mostly been parallel, despite different life experiences (work, grad school, etc). 2016 lagged for a while because I lost two weeks of training, but otherwise they were well-clustered and seemed to converge at the end. 2020 followed suit at first, but then accelerated in mid-March, and especially starting in June. Pretty easy to find the 100 miler, and other big days (two Pemis, a Presi, and 36 for 36). And also the "all the snow melted and I'm sitting at 532 hours" in the last week of December. A normal trip to MSA would have had me close to 550!
Hours per day (28 day average)
There's some rhythm to my hours per day training, with relatively high numbers during ski season, lower during mud season/marathon tapering, averaging around an hour per day except some summers where I take training trips. Notable low in 2016 when I had half a month of zero, and 2019 spring, when grad school hit. Relatively low numbers training for road races, since the miles don't require as many hours and, uh, I don't do enough cross training (rollerskiing in the fall). 2020 differs in that I was at 2h/day for the second half of the year.
I can do the same thing with total meters ascended
In 2018, I made a concerted push for 100km, and made it during the final days at MSA. I got ahead of the line in 2020, but like most years fell off during the spring, which is a combination of marathon training and wet trails. I've generally been quite clustered for the first half of the year, in fact, although big trail running trips stand out: 2019 in the Alps, 2016 and 2017 in Colorado, and it's pretty easy to find big days in the Whites. 2020's slope never got steep over a long period of time, but I just found more time in the mountains.
This is even more apparent over a four-week period (I've added in the logged part of 2013 here). 2019 in Cham stands out, as many mountains were run up. Then is 2013 at Lakes. In fact, most of 2020 wasn't the highest period on record, but from June to November I stayed at 400m per day (or so), more than the 273 I needed to average. I had an extra day, too, although I crossed 100km with a month to spare.
Some notable low periods: Marathon tapers, Summer in Chicago (2016 and 2017 especially). It's flat there.
In 2018, I tracked how many m I'd need, per day, to reach 100km. After a flat summer, I had to average well more than the mean, but made it. In 2019, I was near the mean, but marathon training slowed it down. No such problem in 2020! I was in the vicinity of 2019 until September, but mountains in the fall made quick work of that.
So that's the training log overall. But what about specific activities? What about non-training travel? I'll move over to my 10-year Google Doc for that one! A little background: after a kind-of-crazy trip to ski the Double Birkie while TSAstatus (RIP) was going viral, I decided I should keep track of my miles, by day and by mode. That was 10 years ago, and I've been entering mileage, rounded to the nearest half mile, since. The 2011 data is a bit janky as my methodology has changed (mostly as to what counts as transport versus exercise/pleasure; most anything in the log is in the latter category) but it's mostly been the same since. And yes, SGB does something similar.
So let's get started with something easy: running miles! Well, foot training, so running, O, hiking, trail running, etc.
Before this year, I'd never (*, which I'll address momentarily) run more than 1400 miles in a year. This year, I had covered 1400 miles by September 1. I hewed close to previous years until April 1, but then instead of tapering for a marathon, I just kept going. By June, 2000 seemed reasonable, and by September I was tracking how many miles per day I'd need to hit 2000. Which I eventually attained. One note: by my online tracker, rounding to the nearest 0.5, I got 2029.5, and by Attackpoint, I got 2039.5. Close enough.
This is even easier to see on the 30 day moving average. During March, I paralleled other Boston training years quite well, but instead of going into a taper, I just kept going. I peaked at almost 9 miles per day in April, kept above any previous year until August, and then had another, even higher peak in the fall. Gee I wonder why.
About that *: This is not the greatest number of miles run in any year for me! I have data from 2006, when I hiked the Appalachian Trail. So I can overlay that, too. Even with just trail miles, I was at 2200, and averaged 18 miles per day most of that.
We don't have to stop with running. How about skiing? It's worth adding skiing and rollerskiing together, right? And not breaking the season in January, but rather the ceremonial beginning of the season, May 1. This year, I got ahead of the game rollerskiing in the summer, but slacked off in the fall. I don't expect a big winter mile season, what with poor snow so far, no MSA, and Weston restrictions. But we'll see.
What about days off? I keep track of those too. Well, I keep track of days with zero miles, so I can keep track of rest days #restdaybrags:
Only once before 2020, in 2013, did I go a month without a rest day. In 2020 I had a two-month run streak, and another month-long training streak in July. Somehow, I came away uninjured. Biggest #restdaybrags? Post 2016 marathon, 2015 December when I sprained my ankle, and 2019 when I was writing a thesis.
Now, how about non-training transportation? I have that, too! Here's walking:
You can see the refined methodology over time. In 2011, I defined hiking in and out of the huts (Aug-Oct) as transportation; in 2013, it was defined as exercise (loggable) so instead of particularly high it was quite low. I'm not about to go back and recategorize things; it would be a lot of guesswork. Not only did I not have a log, I didn't even have a Strava! I was entering distances based on the White Mountain Guide.
It's interesting how seemingly unlike years cluster. 2014, 2015, 2018 and 2020 were all different life situations, with similar amounts of walking for transport. 2019 was quite high, and 2020 was shaping up to parallel 2019 until covid. Getting a bike in San Diego and living in Maine did not make for a lot of walking for transport.
Now, biking (note: I don't do enough bike training for fun charts).
Like walking, the 2020 lifestyle did not lend itself to a lot of biking. Why were 2015 and 2016 high? My commute got longer, and I made it most days by bike. (Still not very long!) The grad school years were shorter. We'll see how 2021 shapes up. Still, I would guess there were years in the Twin Cities when I biked a good deal more than this with a longer bike commute and at least one month I cracked 300 miles for work trips alone.
Motorized transport? Yes, we have that too. Let's start with all transit use, and then breaking it down by bus and train:
Here there's a bit of a split. Some years most of the travel comes from a few trips. Other years, it comes from commuting, especially summers in Chicago when I had a longer, mostly transit commute.
How about driving and riding in cars? Got that, too, and split by driving alone (SOV) or with someone else (HOV). I think SGB keeps track of how many people were in the vehicle! Pretty much anything which was a 15-passenger van or less was a car, and anything bigger would be in transit. School buses for races are still transit, by this count.
Driving and HOV include several long road trips, in 2016, 2017 and 2019; it's easy to pick those out. I haven't done a 1000-mile solo road trip though, so SOV has more seasonal rhythm to it and has a four-week chart, note how driving is high in winter (ski season), low during mud season, high during summer and fall, low during stick season, and high again when ski season rolls around.
Other notes: 2013 I had a job which required a lot of driving. It's also easy to pick out flat periods: time in the huts in 2013, summers in Chicago (2016 to 2018), 2019 in Europe, and 2020 in covid. 2020 was way behind until I came back to the East Coast.
What have we left out? Air travel!
My highest year driving was 2013, the only year over 20,000 miles. But my highest travel year? Good ol' 2019, at nearly 60,000! To the skies we go! This includes all travel but air trips are pretty easy to pick out. Two patterns stand out. Late February has the Birkie trips. Non-status years stand out: 2013 to 2016. And I am master of the last-minute mileage run! Whether it was SFO and PHX on DL in 2011, ANC on DL in 2012, or the last three years of ski-trip-mileage-runs (BZN, DEN, RNO on UA), I've taken to the skies in early December to find some snow, and some miles. But not so much in 2020. The higher y-axis here flattens out time in SAN quite a bit, and without any need (but certainly with desire) to get on an aircraft, 2020 winds up as the lowest year in quite some time.
Hopefully I'll be able to take to the skies, safely, in 2021.
3 PM
Run 27:58 [1] 3.29 mi (8:30 / mi) +14m 8:23 / mi
ahr:170 max:200
Pushing the nephew in the stroller. This worked very well!
Friday Jan 1, 2021 #
3 PM
Trail Run 54:55 [1] 5.26 mi (10:26 / mi) +144m 9:37 / mi
ahr:175 max:207
Decided not to drive 3h to ski on manmade, so went to the Fells for an hour.
Thursday Dec 31, 2020 #
4 PM
Run 40:01 [1] 4.8 mi (8:20 / mi) +17m 8:15 / mi
ahr:169 max:194
Ran to Cambridge to put things in boxes.
Wednesday Dec 30, 2020 #
Note
In a normal year, I would have gotten a cold at some point, and had a slow week.
This year … no colds (I haven't gotten the big cold, and I haven't had a little one since October, 2019), and this is party of way fewer rest days than ever before (not tapering/recovering from races, too). Days where miles logged == 0:
2012: 122
2013: 74
2014: 91
2015: 101
2016: 102
2017: 103
2018: 81
2019: 108
2020: 52
And that still includes 5 days on either side of the 100 miler!
So, with the snow gone, nothing to train for, and my miles in the bag, I took a breather this week. I even did some yoga. #RestDayBrags
Tomorrow also marks the end of a decade of tracking all my miles, and there will be a long thread with lots of graphs about it!
This year … no colds (I haven't gotten the big cold, and I haven't had a little one since October, 2019), and this is party of way fewer rest days than ever before (not tapering/recovering from races, too). Days where miles logged == 0:
2012: 122
2013: 74
2014: 91
2015: 101
2016: 102
2017: 103
2018: 81
2019: 108
2020: 52
And that still includes 5 days on either side of the 100 miler!
So, with the snow gone, nothing to train for, and my miles in the bag, I took a breather this week. I even did some yoga. #RestDayBrags
Tomorrow also marks the end of a decade of tracking all my miles, and there will be a long thread with lots of graphs about it!
C • lies 11
9 AM
Run 24:32 [1] 2.76 mi (8:53 / mi) +14m 8:45 / mi
ahr:184 max:211
Mel suggested a short run and that sounded fine by me.
Monday Dec 28, 2020 #
3 PM
Run 29:08 [1] 3.36 mi (8:40 / mi) +14m 8:34 / mi
ahr:156 max:196
Quick run on "the loop" in Cambridge I've been running for the past 9 years. But might not be running much longer! Looks like I'll be vacating Cambridge, officially, in the next couple of weeks. I'd planned to leave earlier this year, then covid happened, then meeting someone happened, etc. I should have bitten the bullet in July and vacated then, would have saved a few months' rent. But luckily I found someone to take over my lease, so I'm free.
Now we are maybe going to try to cram into a too-small apartment for a few months until her lease is up before we make our next move. As long as we don't both have to work from here we think it can work (I can find several days of office space each week). Plus … there money saved can pay for several working ski trips if/when it snows.
Now we are maybe going to try to cram into a too-small apartment for a few months until her lease is up before we make our next move. As long as we don't both have to work from here we think it can work (I can find several days of office space each week). Plus … there money saved can pay for several working ski trips if/when it snows.