Year in review: 2010

A former boyfriend of mine was obsessive about tracking all of his running stats. He had this crazy spreadsheet that only he could understand in which he tracked every mile of the zillion or so he ran each year. He was obsessive about other stats too. All around his apartment, I would find handwritten lists of every movie he watched, every book he read, and season stats for all of his favorite soccer teams.

I'm not that meticulous, but I do keep a calendar of my workouts and a spreadsheet of my races. Thanks to that spreadsheet, I can now present a brief retrospective of the races I ran in 2010. Prior to this year, I had run five races in my entire life: two 5Ks in 2007 (with the aforementioned boyfriend); and a 5K, 5-miler, and 15K in 2009. In 2010, I registered for a total of 21 races and ran 18. Here they are, month by month:

January: 

Montgomery County Road Runners' New Year's Day 5k, 1/1/10, 31:45. MCRR hosts some very scenic races, but this was not one of them. Basically, we ran around an industrial park twice. It was fun, though, because Katie came and we had a very tasty brunch afterward.

February:

I was supposed to run the Annapolis Striders' Valentines's Day 5K (1st leg of the Champ Series) on 2/13/10. Instead, we had record-breaking snow, the race was cancelled, and I completed a marathon of shoveling.

March: 

The B&A Half-Marathon, 3/7/10, 2:24:05. My first (and fastest) half-marathon, and my first race with Val. It would have been faster if I hadn't tried my hand at making coffee ice cream the night before, resulting in at least 3 bathroom stops along the course.  

April:

MCRR's Difficult Run XC 8K, 4/3/10, 1:04:16. This was my first-ever cross-country race and they weren't kidding about the difficulty. The photo above does not do justice to the initial hill, which the race organizers described as "like climbing a wall," and took at least 10 minutes to scramble up. It was a 2-loop course, so we ascended that hill twice. Despite the difficulty, this was a really fun race.

AS Cherry Pit 10-miler, 4/11/10, 1:49:08 (2nd leg of the Champ Series). This was my first (and fastest) 10-mile race. I remember being hungry by about mile 4 and spending the remaining 6 miles dreaming about bagels.

May:

Arbutus Spring Fling 5K, 5/1/10, 30:22. Val organized this first-time race (which was great), and there was a little course-marking problem which resulted in a bunch of people running some extra distance and me winding up in 2nd place for my age group. This was the first race I ever blogged about!

June:

Zooma Annapolis 10K, 6/6/10, 1:12:23. This was my first (and slowest) 10K race. It was hot, crowded, and disorganized. Misery from start to finish! This also happened to be the first full day of my 31st year. I'm happy to say things have improved since then.

AS Father's Day 10K, 6/20/10, 1:07:18 (3rd leg of the Champ Series). This was way better than Zooma, but still hot and hard. Val and I both look miserable in all of the photos.

July:

I was supposed to run the AS Women's Distance Festival 5K on 7/10/10, but instead I fell on a trail run and twisted my ankle. My sister did the race though- her first- through pouring rain!

AS John Wall 1-mile, 7/17/10, 8:27 (4th leg of the Champ Series). I was very happy that my ankle recovered and I was able to run this. I placed myself in the 8:30-9:30 heat based on the only mile-run time I could remember, a 9-minute mile run in 9th grade PE. I think that I could have done better, and hope to prove it next year!

MCRR Riley's Rumble Half-Marathon, 7/25/10, 2:45:00. That time is approximate because it was so hot (well over 100 degrees), that MCRR downgraded this from a race to a "fun run." FYI: there is nothing fun about trying to run 13.1 miles when the heat index is 110.

August:

AS Dog Days XC 8K, 8/1/10, 55:24 (5th leg of the Champ Series). This race was so much easier than the MCRR XC race! Later that day, Katie and I had the best meal of my life at Volt in Frederick and my friends Nancy and Jessie got engaged. Yay!

I was supposed to run my very first Annapolis 10-miler on 8/29/10, but my appendix had other plans. Next year!

September:

MCRR's Parks Half-Marathon, 9/12/10, 2:35:13. This is my favorite picture of myself running, mainly because it was taken 16 days after my appendectomy. Take that, appendix!

October:

AS Metric Marathon (26.2K), 10/3/10, 3:10:13 (6th leg of the Champ Series). I was really sick the day of this race. The rural scenery was beautiful, but all I could focus on was not throwing up on a cow.

Baltimore Half-Marathon, 10/16/10, 2:26:32. This was the first race post-appendectomy where I really felt back to normal, and I loved it. I was super-excited to come within 2 minutes of my B&A time, because this course was hilly as hell and B&A was almost totally flat.

Marine Corps Marathon, 10/31/10, 6:10:03. I am much more proud of the $3376 Katie C. and I raised for the Kelly Murray Scholarship Fund than I am of this finish time, but whatever. It was my first, and there was that whole losing-an-organ problem to contend with. I'm going to hope I won't have that problem when I train for the next one (you hear that, tonsils? gall bladder?).

November:

AS Down's Park 5-miler, 11/6/10, 51:58 (7th leg of the Champ Series). This race was awesome. The park was beautiful and it felt like a 50-yard dash after the marathon.

AS Cold Turkey 10K, 11/21/10, 1:04:26. I had some knee trouble starting around mile 4 of this one, but its still my best 10K time.

MCRR Turkey Burnoff 10-miler, 11/27/10, 1:54:39. I lost a good 5-10 minutes in this race trying to find a bathroom that wasn't locked. It was also windy and COLD. Beautiful park, though.

December:

AS Anniverary 15K, 12/12/10, 1:44:30 (8th leg of the Champ Series). I wrote all about this race yesterday, so there's not much to say here. This one was very exciting because it secured me an Ironman award for running the whole 2010 Champ Series.

Fin. My 2011 running year starts January 1 with the first day of Striders' half-marathon training, round two. I'm hoping to get a little faster in 2011- maybe make it to the front of the back, or even the back of the middle! I'll keep you posted.