(Almost) Year End Stats

We had our club Christmas Light Run last night - it was cloudy and oh, so cold. Amy and Tim were our hosts - they got their power back on yesterday morning and still held the party last night. Tim cooked tons of Italian food, the rest of us brought breads, salads and desserts. We had a great time. Last I heard, Rob still doesn't have power. I think the morning news said there are still about 750,000 households powerless. The temps dropped to 26 last night, which makes it tough. I'm glad we got ours back early.


Why dogs bite people.

Speaking of no power, yesterday morning Jenny, Melissa, Sonya and I met at 5:00 am to run from Orting to South Prarie on the trail. We discovered that it is very, very dark in the valley when the power is out. The entire town of Orting was dark - it was even hard to recognize the turn to the park. The trail was littered with debris and a few downed trees. Only one was all the way over the trail, but it had caught in another tree and formed an arch we could run under. Sections of the trail (this is a paved trail) were covered with frozen mud from the flooding a few weeks back. It is amazing - there are stretches where the riverbank was lined with trees and bushes that are now bare. The edge of the trail is crumbling right down to the river in those areas. Not only that, but the river formed new channels and in some spots we could see the giant trees laying in the middle of the river. As the sun came up over Mt. Rainier, the skies turned pink and the mountain cast a shadow out on to the clouds - it was amazing to see. Melissa's cousin got a picture that I'm hoping to post in the next few days. We were done with our 16 miles and on our way to coffee by 8:35. Not too bad.

It was a high mileage weekend - 16 yesterday morning, 5 last night and 5 this morning, giving me 44 for the week. And since it's that time of year, and other bloggers have been totaling up the yearly mileage, I decided to do the same. From January to the end of April (when I had surgery and recovery) I logged about 320 miles - an average of 20 a week. From May 1 till today, I've logged 1106 - an average of 36 a week. I've never added miles for the year before, but I'm pretty pleased with what I've got. I'll easily pass 1500 before the year end.

I also checked back to see how many races I ran: 15 with one more marathon to go. The list looks like this:
1 - 5k
1 - 4 miler
2 - 5 milers
1 - 5.6 miler
2 - 10k
1 - 12k
1 - 15k
1- half marathon
2 - relays (two legs in one, three in the other)
3 - marathons

Nice variety, huh? For comparison, I ran 14 races in 2005, the longest of which was a 10k (two of those races were the same relays), and in 2004 I ran six, none longer than five miles. I say hooray for good health! Hooray for being able to run longer than an hour! Hooray!


This morning, a chilly 28 degrees. (Melissa, Rick, Me)
















Please note the change in mileage above - a typo that made me look too good - should have been 1106 rather than 1160. I guess it was a wishful-thinking typo!