The year in review, it's about time

Well, 2012 was a pretty good year running wise.  I’m still disappointed with my failure at Wasatch, but oh well, life goes on and there’s always this year.

I managed to run more miles this year than I ever have.  2515 miles total.  I also ran a messload of races.

The years started with my running the Kahtoola Snowshoe25K.  My time wasn’t spectacular but I did it more as a lark than anything.  Since my lovely wife had started running the previous fall, I entered her in her first race, the Kahtoola Snowshoe 5K.  She was all sorts of worried but I told her to just walk the thing and have a good time.  She had been running up to around 8 miles so 3 miles was no big deal.  Turns out she came in second place for the women and told me if she had pushed she could have taken first.  Not bad for a first race of any sort.

The first Saturday in February had me running the StridersWinter Training Series 5K.  I like to run this race to remind me of how much short races like that really really suck.  Still, I managed to run my fastest 5K time in probably 15 years on a difficult course.  I came in 75^th out of 485 runners and managed a 23:33 time.  Maybe I can go faster this year.  A couple of weeks later I ran the Moab Red Hot 55K and managed to cut about 30 minutes off the previous year’s  time.  March brought a temporary hold to the running since it’s hard to do that and get ready for the Buffalo Run at the same time.  April found a bunch of the Happy Utah Mountain Runners making the drive to the Grand Canyon for a little rim-to-rim-to-rim action.  The big surprise this time was the snow that fell Friday night.  It was very cool to see the Grand Canyon in a different way.  April also saw me run the Salt Flats 100 out by Wendover.  Interesting run to say the least.  My time wasn't what I had hoped, but that's the way it goes sometimes.  In May I ran the Timp Trail Marathon for the third time.  My fastest time yet.  In June I ran the Logan Peak Trail Run.  I think I've done this four times now and it's easily one of my favorite races of the year.  Gorgeous scenery, tough course.  Ran my fastest time ever here as well.  July?  Well, the annual self abuse of Speedgoat happened.  Good Lord that course is tough.  I get really depressed when it takes me over nine hours to run a 50K.  Sigh!  August saw a bunch of HUMR's heading up to Oregon to run the Waldo 100K.  This was my sixth year running this race.  I love it and I'll keep going back.  The course was altered some due to a forest fire, so comparing times to past years wasn't possible, but I had a great day out there.  September brought my annual trip thru the Wasatch.  This year I didn't make it and ended up dropping at Upper Big Water.  Still, I did make 62 miles of the course.  There's always next year.  In September I also paced a friend to his first 100 mile finish at The Bear.  I think I might run that one this year.

Yeah, so that was my racing season.  Quite a few.  Had a good time at most of them.  So what about the rest of my running?  Well, since I am an Engineer, here's the stats and graphs.

Miles - 2434

Vertical - Not nearly enough, but still a lot, around 300,000' I think.

This last graph kind of tells the story of the year.  More miles in a year than I ever have.  Even though I slacked off the last couple of months.  Maybe in 2013 I can get close to 3000 miles?