2009 has been quite a fun & busy year for me in the running/biking/swimming world. Ok, not really in the swimming world, but the other two for sure! For the first time in 8 years I started running again, and I rode/jumped like a maniac in my second season of cyclocross. It was a pretty solid training year in my own personal opinion (and we all know that’s the one that matters!) and I hit quite a few milestones along the way There’s still room for improvement in 2010 though! Before I can tell you what’s ahead, I should probably recap what happened this past year.

Running
In March, I decided that I was tired of being a lazy bum and decided to start running again. I picked a 5K a few months away [the Big Peach 5K at the beginning of May] and started on a Couch to 5K program. Oddly enough, my problem was I couldn’t go slow enough in training. I eventually learned how to pace myself, and completed my first 5K in over 8 years. Woohoo! Since that first race, I’ve competed in one running race every month the rest of the year. In addition to just competing, I somehow managed to get a PR in every race by around a minute [with the exception of the last race in December]. Not only that, but I got 2nd place in my Age Group in the race in November!

As in aside, I have figured out the key to doing well in races and placing in your age group – race small races! The race in November only had about 80-100 people, and maybe 5-10 in my age group. So I suppose getting 2nd place in my AG for that race is almost like cheating, but I’ll take it!

On top of all the 5Ks that I ran, I also did one 10K for the year – the Peachtree Road Race. I haven’t done another since then, but in the upcoming year I hope to do quite a few of them now that the distance is no problem for me. My times in all my races for the year are shown below:

2009-05-02 – Big Peach 5K – 29:15
2009-06-06 – Virginia Highlands Summerfest 5K – 28:15
2009-08-15 – ATC Grand Finale 5K – 26:30
2009-09-12 – FirED Up 5K – 24:34
2009-10-19 – Germantown Streetfest 5K Bier Run – 22:40
2009-11-26 – TN 5K – 21:56 [2nd place AG]
2009-12-19 – Virginia Highlands Christmas 5K – 23:35

2009-07-04 – Peachtree Road Race [10K] – 58:53

Cycling
I haven’t done any road racing, and I haven’t done any mountain biking [racing at least] but I do love me some cyclocross. When September rolled around I almost forgot about running and threw myself into the game of cyclocross. I had started training in June and built up a pretty good fitness level, but unfortunately [kinda] a long vacation in the middle of the season derailed some of my fitness.

Cyclocross is a lot more difficult to compare your progress as you can’t look at your time since the course varies wildly from week to week, and even on the same property from year to year. So instead of looking at time, I decided to just look at how I placed in my category [CX4 - Or beginner]. Last year, my best placing had me only beating 22% of the people in my category. This year, in every race except for my first back from vacation, I placed better than that. My best placings saw me beating 60%, 50%, and 44% of the other competitors. Definite improvement from last year, but still a long way to go!

Training
As mentioned above, I saw good improvements and progress made in both running and biking throughout the year. I was completely self coached and came up with my own training. My biggest problem throughout the year was sticking with my schedule and talking myself out of workouts. I would go some months with only working out once due to vacation, lots going on at work, or other various lame excuses. My biggest goal for the new year is to fix this and stick with my training plan and stay consistent.

With all that said, I still got a decent amount of training in for my first year training full time. The totals for my year were:

• 76 runs for a total of 241 miles with a total time of 42:39
• 63 rides for a total of 848 miles with a total time of 54:22

A breakdown of both total miles and number of activities per month is shown in the 2 graphs below (click for larger size)

Miles of Activity by month:








Number of activities by month:








All in all, I’m quite pleased with how my 2009 year of racing and training ended up. There are some big changes under way for 2010 to bring even more success in the New Year!