Saturday, December 31, 2011

A Year of Running in Review

Gee, I sure put on the miles in 2011.  Besides traveling all over the world to run (Antarctica, Washington, Chile, New York, Colorado amongst other locations for work travel), I happened to look up how much I had actually ran or cycled this year - my main two cardiovascular activities.  And the total is a staggering:  2014 total miles.  And this doesn't count a perhaps last run or bike ride this afternoon. (I'm posting this at 2:30 on Dec 31.)  That's up 300 miles from 2010!  All told, I ran or biked for 240 hours - basically a week and a half.  Over 1700 of those were running miles.

Statistics are an easy way to talk about one's main hobby, and I suspect they wrap up the package nicely into something digestible.  So, let me try to put some prose against this year and highlight my 11 favorite running moments from 2011.


11. Two glorious runs in Bellevue, WA
From the I-90 Bike Path looking North over Lake Washington
For the first time in years, I spent a number of days in the Seattle area.  I've gotten good at finding local trails by searching online (more on how to do this in a future post), and Bellevue revealed a wonderful "Lake to Lake" urban trial that treks between Lake Washington to Lake Sammamish.  This path connects a series of parks including some fairly wooded areas.  While you go on and off of city sidewalks, the overall effect is great.  I ran to both lakes on different occasions.