2008 Recap and 2009 Goals

Well, it's halfway through January so I thought I better get a new entry on my blog so the first thing people see isn't Christmas!

2008 wasn't exactly a great year for me, it proved quite challenging dealing with my first major running injury. And typical me, I didn't handle it well. I started feeling pain in my shin last January but continued to run. I did back off the mileage and did a lot of road bike riding but due to some events I had already registered for, I didn't stop running completely on what turned out to be a stress fracture.

I did back out of a couple events when common sense prevailed and volunteered at those runs instead. It was a lot of fun to see those events from a different point of view. I always make it a point to thank volunteers and now I'm really glad I do. Our job as runners is easy compared to what volunteers do.

So, to recap 2008. I ran 586 miles despite 25 weeks of 5 miles or less. I biked 1,406 miles. April was my most interesting month considering I only ran 3 times but logged 80 miles. I did American River 50, Daffodil 5K, and the Big Sur Marathon. As fall rolled around and I finally decided that I really did need to stop running and let my leg heal I took up something new: Bikram Yoga. It's 90 minutes in 105 degrees doing 26 yoga postures and it is very challenging. I am hoping to do a post in the future about it. I started doing "hot" yoga to help me keep my strength and endurance while letting my stress fracture heal. And I managed to do it 50 times by the end of 2008.

Now on to 2009. I'm slowly building up my running mileage but mostly on the treadmill since it's easy to do that at work. I was lucky enough to get into Way Too Cool 50K so that will be my focus race for the spring. I've heard so many wonderful things about this race and I'm really looking forward to running it and seeing all the big names of ultrarunning.

As tune ups for WTC, I'm going to run PCTR's Montana de Oro 25K Feb 15. That course ate me up in 2007 because I hadn't done enough hill work. I don't have a lot of time to prepare this year so it will just be treated as a good training run. Later that week I will do the WS100 training run that covers the last 20 miles of the course from Green Gate to Auburn.

My summer focus is to do something I couldn't do last year, the Tahoe Rim Trail 50M. I've done the 50K course but really want to do the 50 Mile. I have a few more races and one major goal that I will hold off mentioning now while I work out a few details. But if it works out and I manage to stay healthy and injury free this will be a year to remember.