22nd Year of Running in the Books: Another Average to Mediocre Year

2014 was the 22nd year that I've run on a consistent basis, the 21st full year; I started a third of the way into the year in 1993.

I've been tracking my mileage in an Excel spreadsheet since sometime in 1993 when I decided it would be more effective than tracking solely in my day planner. Actually, I do both. I attempt to jot down my approximate mileage and time spent running in my planner book, then at some point in time I type this information into the spreadsheet.

Life in the Fast Lane: My 22 year old Running Excel Spreadsheet.

Years ago I would update the spreadsheet on a weekly, sometimes even daily, basis. I would go back and look at my training in the weeks/months prior to a marathon and analyze what worked and what I should change. I would make notes in the spreadsheet, now 1.8 megabytes in size, about if I was sick, injured, traveling or sore on a given day.  Sometimes I would go back and review these notes, but not often. 

Now it is a chore updating this spreadsheet as things are quite different for me...married, with kids, busy, busy. For the last several years I update the entire year's worth of running data at the end of the year and it is something I don't particularly look forward to doing. A chore and a bore. BUT...I'm glad I forced myself to track my mileage for so long over the years because I'll know when I need to trade in my body, which has now logged over 53,000 miles.

I vaguely recalled years ago that Excel spreadsheets have certain finite number of rows that could theoretically require me to create a second sheet at some point. I decided to look it up.

Back in the day, versions of Excel up to 7.0 limited the number of rows to 16,384, which would mean that I'd have to create a separate spreadsheet when I'm 73 years old (my spreadsheet is currently near 8,000 rows).

But versions 8.0 through 11.0 quadrupled the maximum rows to 65,536 (and 256 columns) and version 12.0, which is what I now use, expanded that by a factor of 16, to 1,048,576 rows (along with 16,384 columns). So I can safely say that my current spreadsheet,will suffice for tracking my time into the twilight of my life.

2014: How Was It? Mediocre at best. I ran zero marathons in 2014, having to bail on the Los Angeles Marathon after tweaking my right hamstring/sciatic nerve in a half marathon training run.

I actually had a pretty good start to the year, having run a pretty solid 1:24 half marathon off of moderate training, 3 weeks prior to the injury. And then in early April I was able to run a slightly sub-38 minute 10K. But my motivation level dropped and my 50th birthday mid-year travels and fun made it ever more challenging to train for anything.

So it was a pretty uneventful year of running, but I managed to rake in 2,123 miles on the trails and roads. So far 2015 has not been much different...but I'm still running, and that's a good thing.

Today's run up Powerline (Edison) Trail. Danger Ahead? Steep Dropoff? Nah. Just enjoying the view.