Another marathoner dies of sudden cardiac death

This one in Dallas.

Terrible.

But get this idiot blogger questioning the health benefits of exercise:

Did being an athlete prolong his life? Or somehow short-circuit it?

I finished three marathons last millennium and fancied trying another last year until I got busy taking on a new job and dropping a wife.

Stories like this always make me stop and ponder:

A. Do we actually increase our life span by working out and eating healthy and not smoking?

B. Or will fate/destiny/God simply take us when it's time, regardless of our lifestyle?

Denver Post covers barefoot running

Check it out.

Spring

The weather is warming up and I am resuming my barefoot (well actually, I'm wearing socks, the cement is still pretty cold) running.

It feels good, I had started to feel some inkling of my plantar's sneaking up again and a few quarters of barefeet have banished that.

This week I'm going to FLA so I hope to put some real bare feet miles in.

Feburary

Feburary went well. I met my goal so I should be happy but March has been beset with illness and the wife going out of town, both of which have put me behind. It will be a stretch to get back on target for March. Interesting, last year March was my worst month also. Trend?

January went well

I'm only a little bit behind on my pledge to run 3 miles a day. Way ahead of last year. But last year I was starting to get plantar fasciitis.

2009: The year in Running

Looking at the dots, representing individual runs, it's interesting how the long training runs just pop right out when they rise above the morass of 5-10 mile runs.

Looking at the blue line, it's remarkable how consistant the running is from about April through November.

Here is a nomogram giving a picture of how frequent different distances are:

My average distance was 6.53 miles with a median distance of 6.22 miles.

My favorite days to run are Sunday and Tuesday, with Sunday logging an average of one more mile.

These graphs were generated in Excel from the run data I exported my DabbleDB database.

Its too bad that neither RunKeeper nor Nike+ provides such overview data and neither allow you to export the raw data. I am forced to keep a parallel tracking system like DabbleDB. What a hassle.

2010 New Years Resolution

I ran 920 miles (2.5 miles a day) in 2009. I want to increase that 25% to 3.0 miles a day or 1095 miles.

This shouldn't be too hard, just 21 miles a week. We'll see. So far I'm already behind, but just 3 miles.

I also want to run every day for a month.