Overview

2018 was a slightly frustrating year for me. I lost motivation for repeating the 50K from 2017; after my 18 mile long run I asked myself "why" and didn't have an answer. I took a week off and decided to do an arbitrary run streak since I'd never tried to do daily runs before. After six days (of easy paced 3-5 mile runs) both feet were hurting so I killed off that idea.

I intended to mimic last summer and keep my mileage up and attempt a mile PR. However, while summer 2017 was pleasantly mild in contrast for 2018 the hot weather seemed to start earlier, end later, produce more really hot days, and also have a lot of rain. So my summer mileage was very much a regression and I definitely did not come close to a mile PR.

When cool weather finally did come (one of those rare years where I went from using the air conditioner one day to turning up the heat the next) I did finally get some decent miles under my belt, but it really felt like I was rebuilding my base from just about nothing. I ended the year with a head cold, which seemed about right!

Races

Only four races this year, my fewest since 2014 (aka when I was only doing the local 10k). It was mostly due to laziness and procrastination, although I did miss the TRRC Guess-Your-Time race due to my car not cooperating.

Unofficially there was also our annual Shoes to Brews run from RoHV down to Yonkers Brewery. A few folks run from the store proper for a 20+ miler, while most take the train to make it something in the 6-13 mile range. We had another large group, so it's nice to see the tradition continue. This year was after a lot of rain, so a lot of the Old Aqueduct Trail was muddy with the occasional lake of a puddle. My trail shoes got a rare legit workout.

The Numbers

First, overall data:

Obviously a regression in mileage, but at least in the same wheelhouse as my 2016 so I don't feel horrible about it.

Next up, a simple breakdown of long runs:

4 of those long runs were late fall/early winter heading into 2019, so trying to get my legs back.

Now for shoes. I still like my Torins, but the uppers for both pairs had issues. The right heel on both quickly wore out a hole (easily patched with duct tape, but hardly stylish). And by quickly, I mean around 100 miles on my 2nd pair with me being careful about not kicking them off. Much later on they both had significant rips on the seam for the upper and base (inner foot) such that pebbles and water easily get in. And again, stylish. So much for using either pair as walking around shoes after they're retired (which will be soon). I have demo'd the Torin 3.5, but now that they have two uppers I'm not sure which I'll go with next.

Apps

I primarily use Strava for social aspects (although it also helps for sanity checking my numbers). I have my custom built WetzRun family of projects for tracking data and whatnot. I've made a few enhancements this past year. The most recent was to retrieve photos from my archives that have matching timestamps (within reason) of my start/end run times from GPS. It's primarily a helper so for posts like this so that I don't have to manually figure out if it was during a run or not. Useful since I also walk at a leisurely pace along my normal running routes.

I also did some experimentation with tracking weather data. My GPS watch has a thermometer, but it turns out it's highly unreliable (e.g. lowest temp was ~40F degrees, even though I regularly run below freezing). I did some integration work with public weather data from NOAA, but ended up shelving it due to a variety of issues. At some point I'll revisit, most likely using a (free/inexpensive for low volume) commercial source.

I toyed with the idea of making my simple WPF application actually a full-fledged UI (with the intent of dropping the current web UI). But it seems like that's more trouble than it's worth, unless I need to ramp up learning it for a client project. Always the wildcard.

A lot of other updates, but all technical details 99.9% of you don't care about so I'll leave them out (from here; I'll update the project my portfolio soonish).

Future Plans

I'm already signed up a half marathon coming up in a few months, so aside from taking time off for this head cold I'm in training for that. I'd like to see if I can push for a PR, with a fallback goal to be under 1:50.

I finally have a set of resistance bands to give me another option for training, so now I just have to actually use them (and all of the other options I have readily available).

We'll see what the rest of the year brings.

Gallery

Last but not least, a collection of photos I took throughout the year during my runs. Most were during long runs using my phone, but for a decent number (especially later in the year) I used my light point-and-shoot camera. While small, it has a 24x optical zoom so it's generally safe to assume I was using that for any of the raptor photos (most of which I'll be putting into a new post dedicated to that topic).

2019-01-09 Update: eight more photos added