2020 Year-End Training Totals
>> Monday, January 04, 2021
• SWIM: 18,750 yards, all pre-COVID shutdowns in Jan-Mar.
• BIKE: 621.88 miles (17.31 mph ave), a number of those rides were riding along side my boys. (And this doesn't include 1.5 hours of mountain biking in Cuyuna.)
• RUN: 731.48 miles (7:13 / mile ave), 1 of those runs of 6.81 miles with Charlie in the single stroller.
• BIKE TRAINER: 58 hours 14 minutes.
• STRENGTH / CORE: 406 hours 52 minutes.
• WEIGHT: 169.4 start, 156.4 finish, 170.2 high (March), 154.8 low (Dec), 162.22 monthly average.
• BODY FAT: (monthly average) 15.1% high (Feb), 12.7% low (Dec), 13.79% average.
SOME NOTES ON THOSE YEARLY NUMBERS:
• SWIM: Smallest year ever. After my 2 biggest years of swimming, I had a tiny year. January was OK, February I took totally off trying to heal my foot, and then I got in a few weeks of swimming in March before the gyms closed. I'm actually in no hurry to get back to the gym, and I'm surprisingly NOT missing swimming!
• BIKE: A pretty small year. I've only had 4 smaller years: 2 years when Henry was a baby, and 2 years that I had bigger injuries. I got back to running in March after a 7-month injury, and I was in no hurry to add on "extra" stress by pushing it too much on the bike. I took it easy outside in 2020. I don't think I did my "go to" tempo loop at ALL in 2020! But I DID have my first 100 mile bike week since IM WI training in 2007, and it contained my longest ride in over 5 years.
Related to the bike is my huge time on the trainer! In 2018, I had a yearly PR with 56 hours and 39 minutes on the trainer, but in 2020 I broke that with 58 hours and 14 minutes! Most of my trainer rides had LITTLE effort in 2020 which is unusual for me as I've usually done "Spinerval" workouts while on the trainer. (But that easy spinning helped keep the focus on my running which I think helped lead to a solid 10 mile race.) If I were to average that time at 17 mph, I could call that 990 miles. So my "total" bike miles is more like 1,684.8 miles.
• RUN: I'm THRILLED to have gotten in 731 miles when I started 2020 not sure if I'd honestly ever run again. Seriously, I'm tickled pink. Of the last 15 years of tracking my training, this actually falls in the TOP HALF for farthest distance as 7th overall! (And 2 years were JUST barely farther than this!) I always say I really feel like I'm "truly running" when I can get in 80+ miles/month, and that happened the last 4 months of 2020. Here's what my weekly long runs looked like throughout the year:
• STRENGTH / CORE: 2020 BLEW AWAY my previously biggest year! In 2019, I really started lifting more and got in 294 hours as a lifetime yearly PR. But in 2020, I did 406 hours and 52 minutes!! That's the difference of about 48 minutes/day of strength work in 2019 vs. about 1 hour and 7 minutes/day in 2020.
Here's a flexing selfie (sorry not sorry) taken on Dec 31 that shows some progress:
Weight drops EACH MONTH! (But I was at my lifetime heaviest in Jan.)
Body fat drops each month with 1 exception!
Here's what my monthly training looked like (graphs generated by BeginnerTriathlete.com, where I track my training):
2020 workouts by TIME: note the large (and consistent) blue "strength" bars.
2020 workouts by DISTANCE: note Feb COMPLETELY off to try to fix my foot.
2020 with trainer time added in with Photoshop (as BeginnerTriathlete
doesn't do that). I added it at 17 mph as most of it wasn't too hard.
6 RANDOM "THINGS" FROM 2020:
• I got hit by a car while biking. Here's the first post, and here's the update. I had a little stubble on my face when I was hit and needed stitches in my chin, so I didn't/couldn't shave for the 5 days that I had the stitches in, which leads me to...
• I grew my best beard ever. I was hit by a car on Sept 26, and I probably hadn't shaved since around the 20th-22nd. And I still haven't. So I'm about 3.5 months in. My wife thinks it looks good, but she won't kiss me. So it won't be around forever. (See it in the last 2 photos at the bottom of this post.)
• I ran more "socially distant" running routes than ever before. From March through "race day" in early October, I only ran my "regular" route along the river once or twice! (Seriously, I know I did once around April, and I maybe did once before the race, but that was it!) I ran much more boring routes up and down Cleveland Ave. And for the last few months, I've started hitting up the river route more because it's colder and there aren't as many people out.
• I expanded our tiny garden. This was split into a mid-summer post showing what had been done, and then a final wrap-up post with final garden numbers. I was so happy with how much we were able to grow!
• Some house projects. We first kicked the squirrels out of our dormers and had work done to prevent that again (all under our roofing warranty!). Then I did a lot of siding painting, and then the BIG one was the work on our basement walls (which was finished at a great time as we use the rowing machine and treadmill down there a LOT now). I also painted the trim around our side door of our house, scrubbed our garage door to a white it's never been in years, and used field stone to re-trim our front yard while planting a lot more hostas. See links above for the basement and main siding painting project, but here are a few from a follow-up siding project from August that I never shared:
Before and after above our bay window.
Close-up of paint baking off.
A BUNCH of areas "spot primed" on the south side of our house.
The south side looking fine again!
A few camping pics from the year: newest at top and oldest at the bottom.
Oh, I nearly forgot about our Feb trip to Jay Cooke (while I hiked in the boot as it was 20 below 0).
ATHLETIC HIGHLIGHTS FOR 2020 (AKA: Things I'll remember):
(There are 8, so let's count down to #1)
• EIGHT: Easing off the calf work - and having it help! (I haven't written anything about this yet I don't think.) Based on recommendation of my last PT (who has proven herself to be true every step along the way), I've stopped stretching my heels as much and stopped wearing calf sleeves as much. (I think I finally started putting on my calf sleeves for long runs once I hit 9 miles near the end of August.) I was having heel/foot pain while still having very flexible ankles, and she noted that most people who run as fast as I do have MORE tightness in their calves, as they NEED that tightness to "spring off" fast when running. She also told me to stop doing my eccentric heel raises after all my runs - I used to do them RELIGIOUSLY post-run, but I've maybe done them once or twice in the last 6 months. Some of the things she said sounded crazy at first. But I took her advice, and my heels/calves have felt better all year.
• SEVEN: No more breakfast. I've always been a big fan of breakfast. But being stuck at home since March made me stop eating before my morning workout. And then I didn't really need anything right after my workout, so I'd have a protein shake for the first part of the year (as I noted in this post in June), and I'd make a smoothie with protein powder over these last 6 months after my morning workouts. I'm SHOCKED that I can do my 10+ mile long runs by just getting up and starting to run. I only had a GU before my longest run back in September just to make sure I could still stomach them for the virtual 10 mile. This still feels strange as I write about this - how am I not bonking without breakfast before these long runs?!?
• SIX: Weight loss and fat loss. I showed 2 graphs above that highlighted this so well. There's been NO change in what I eat (except for the breakfast thing noted above). This could be in part to lifting more (more muscle means more fat burning?). This could be due to not having breakfasts any more and being a bit more hungry for lunch (there's a "fasting" component that I've been unintentionally doing). And it could also be in part to not going to the gym so I'm not doing my "heavy" leg exercises which put on bulk on my quads. I think it's maybe 20% more lifting, 40% no breakfast, and 40% no heavy leg exercises. But I can't be certain. (And maybe that greater protein intake mid-morning had something to do with it as well - I suppose that's factor #4 to consider.) When I weighed myself a few months ago in front of my wife, she said "Noooo... that can't be right!!" She's been noticing my "beefiness" as she calls it, and she was shocked to see my weight going DOWN. I started 2020 around 170, and I only had 3 months in 2019 where I was in the 159s for weight. This year ended with 5 months in the 150s. I'm only able to see 16 months back to make this graph but here's looking back to the middle of 2019 through now showing that I was gaining weight through Jan of 2020:
The last 16 months of weight: climbing, and then dropping throughout 2020.
• FIVE: LOTS of strength work, and being OK with not going to the gym. I borrowed weights from 2 friends (a set of 30 lb dumbbells and a set of 40 lb dumbbells), and I've thrived at home with those. A year ago, I would not have believed that I'd be OK with not going to the gym for 9 months WHILE having more upper body muscle than ever before. I started doing pull-ups a bit more about 2 years ago, and I've done more this year than ever in my life: check this post from March to see a video of me breaking our pull-up bar, and then a video of me successfully doing 10 pull-ups. And this post from August mentions an "at home lifting PR" of 240 push-ups, 640 back rows (320/side), 65 pull-ups, 256 bicep curls, and 240 elevated tricep dips. (That was 8 rounds, but I usually do 4 rounds on "quick" days while doing 5-6 on most "normal" days.)
• FOUR: My first race in 14 months! I ran the Virtual TC 10 Mile in October after being injured since the previous August. I was THRILLED to be doing any hard running in 2020! And because it was a "smaller" virtual race, I finished first in my age group (which will NEVER happen again at that race).
• THREE: Consistent running. I started running back in early March. And I've been consistent. After the Virtual TC 10 Mile in October, I posted a graph about my consistency. Since March, I've only had TWO TIMES where I didn't have a week that had a M, W, and F run. And I "made up" both of those times: first was the race on a Sunday, but that counted as my Monday run. And second was last month when I was heading out to Itasca State Park for a few days with the boys, so I did my long run on Sunday instead of Monday. I've done runs every-other day 3x each week with 1 set of back-to-back rest days every week for the last 43 weeks! (And counting...)
Also, I've kept my mileage consistent since I built for the 10 mile race. In this post I noted averaging just over 20 miles/week for 10 weeks. That streak has continued, and now I'm up to 369.3 miles over the last 18 weeks, or an average of 20.52 miles/week.
• TWO: Actually, going off that last point, I've had consistent EVERYTHING. I noted my regularity of workouts were consistent above, but the "kinds" were too: Monday long runs, and every-other-week Friday speed workouts. The rest have been "just runs."
Going back to early May, I've had 2-3 bike rides or trainer rides each week except for 2 weeks: the week of the 10 mile race and the week of Christmas (which is a weird week to begin with, but also included that 3-day trip with the boys to Itasca State Park).
And my strength work has been SUPER consistent as well. Yes, I've had workouts shortened or changed because of camping trips, but looking back in my calendar, I only "missed" doing strength work 13 days all year. And 10 or more of those were due to camping trips, resting around the 10 mile race, and traveling to or from Mexico a year ago. I truly never simply decided to "skip" a day.
• ONE: Kicking my foot injury. I was cautious for my first 10 (or so) runs in March, but by April I knew I was good to go. I had 7 months completely off from running, but I was back at it.
Blowing snow in "the boot" 11 months ago.
As for 2020 goals?... I think this is a pretty obvious one. And ONLY one. Fix this foot and start running again. If I can get in an actual race in 2020, that'd be icing on the cake! (Even if it's not with the amount of training I'd perfer to have under my belt.)
Well, I fixed the foot AND got in 1 race! (During a year that races didn't exist.)
As for goals for 2021? I don't have anything solid. See if COVID allows a safe multisport race? Stay injury free? Keep up the consistent running and lifting? Put in more effort on the bike? Yeah, sure. All of those. Nothing real specific though. Oh hey, being I've been lifting more, maybe I'll keep a yearly count of pull-ups (I did 57 on Saturday, and I'm pretty certain that I did 5,400 to 5,800 pull-ups in 2020 [based on averaging out a few months]).
But I can't (and WON'T) say that I have a specific yearly running mileage total in mind, or that I want to break my strength training time (because I CAN'T!), or anything else. Really, just more of the same would be good! For how much 2020 sucked, it really didn't treat me too bad!
And to wrap this up, here are some fun memories from each month of 2020 as posted on Instagram (18 images because I couldn't cut it down to 12):
Jan: ski lessons!
Jan: a barefoot moonlight stroll in the ocean.
Feb: reading with my BIG reader!
March: training Henry to give COVID haircuts.
March: Charlie learned to ride on 2 wheels!
April: Henry's longest ride with me (9 miles to Fort Snelling and back).
May: fought off some squirrels.
June: the biggest ball of twine in Minnesota (on a road trip).
July: fun with my wife's family at the lake.
July: seeing my family at the lake as well.
July: Charlie's first tooth!
Aug: taking Henry mountain biking for the first time.
Aug: catching fish with my niece.
Sept: first "back to school" pic that lined up for all THREE of us.
Oct: the "draw down" between the dams on the Mississippi.
Nov: we found out the boys like working out
next to us in the basement (also, NEW TREADMILL!).
Dec: Henry's first job shoveling snow for an older neighbor.
Dec: ending the year with some sledding at the "big" hill.
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment