2016: A Year in Review

 

I can’t believe that I haven’t written a blog in months. It wasn’t intentional as I have been running strong throughout the summer and fall and into the winter. It just was one of those inspiration things. There are always plenty of topics in my head to write about weekly or monthly or what have you, but I just haven’t found the time or the inspiration to take it on recently. I’m going to try to make that change in the new year. 

But before we get running into 2017, let’s take a look at what I accomplished in 2016. 

2016 was another busy year of racing, notching another 26 different ones under my belt. From 5Ks to marathons, I had quite the variety of racing this year. The most races, I believe, were half marathons of which I ran 6. Now that I’m counting, I also ran six 5Ks but didn’t run one until September this year! 

I set PRs in the 5K (finally broke 21 minutes), 15K, Half marathon (by two seconds), and the full 26.2 by nearly 7 minutes. I missed my 10K PR by 2 or 3 seconds. Overall, is say that I had a pretty successful racing year. 

2016 was also the year I “ran the year”, which means I broke 2016 miles on the year. Which seemed impossible before I actually did it. I didn’t even think it was something to do until I hit 1,000 before July and thought “why not?”. I hit 2,016 on Christmas Eve with my dad which was pretty cool. 

The thing I’m proudest of this year though is that I made it through the entire year injury free and making and maintaining so many running friendships. That’s what makes this whole endeavor worth it. The human element. While I do sometimes have to put other relationships on hold or prioritize some of them differently, I like to think that I’m not sacrificing anyone for running. But it is also something I want to be better at in 2017 as well. 

2017. Wow. I’m getting old. What do I want to accomplish this year? Well, I think I mostly want another injury free year (don’t we all) and to continue to progress in my runs and get better every day. I don’t have any goals or goal races lined up yet. I think I want to do another spring marathon but I’m not sure which. Some friends are doing Boston and some are doing New Jersey again. While I had a good time in New Jersey, I want to try and do a different marathon each time I do one. Right now I’ve been looking at and researching on the Sugarloaf Marathon in Maine. That looks like a fun and fast course, but I’d be lone wolfing it. So we’ll see. 

2017 will be the year we return to running the Ragnar ultra. This time in Pennsylvania if all goes to plan. It’ll be fun to get the gang back together and be out on a beautiful, well supported course with lots of food and fun. 

I’m a planner so I know that there will be races I will run like the Boilermaker or the Firecracker 4 and some others, but as of right now I don’t have any set plans and I’m okay with that. Who knows. Maybe I’ll hit 2017 miles next year. Or maybe I’ll scale way back and do more hiking. Either way I know that I’ll be enjoying what I’m doing and taking it one step at a time. That’s all we can ask of ourselves right?

Until next time, keep on runnin’. Oh. And happy new year!