2015 Annual Summary
(Maybe my favorite photo of the year)
2015 is more than 2 weeks in the books.
It was a roller-coaster of a year with highs and lows in all aspects of my life. First, I was injured and not running, but I was swimming great. Then I was running and swimming. But then just as I felt the running was truly coming back, I had spinal surgery and radiation. Then I got back into running and swimming and closed out the year feeling great about both. I started the year bored with my job and trying to look for a new one and then I left that job before I had a new one. Now I’m doing this consulting work and it’s keeping me busy while I look for another full-time job. The best news of the year though has been watching my beautiful wife get progressively more and more pregnant. With our due date just about a week away now, she is very, very pregnant.
After a really big year of racing in 2014, I wasn’t sure if I’d do any racing or serious training in 2015. I started the year just getting back into running after months of nagging injuries and general malaise and felt content to just have a year of running for fun. I also knew that in July I’d be having my third spinal surgery since 2010, so I wasn’t sure how prepared for a race I could get before the surgery or what I would feel like doing (or could do) after it. So I just eased my way back into running, and by April/May, I was feeling pretty good. I wasn’t running a ton (especially compared to prior years), but I was getting to the trails pretty regularly and all the aches and pains from 2014 seemed like a thing of the distant past. In June, I crewed and paced Billy at Western States 100.
(At the Western States 100 start line, 9 hours before the race, with Jimmy, Billy and Joel)
The trip was a blast and Jimmy, Joel and I had a great day and night crewing Billy. He ran really well and seemed to be having fun for most of the race. Except for a couple hours in the middle of the night that Joel and I spent shivering on the dirt at the Highway 49 (mile 93.5) aid station, we had a ton of fun all day too. A couple weeks later, on the day before my surgery, I ran up Bear Canyon to Mt. Baldy. And I actually PR’d a whole bunch of segments, including the climb from bottom to top.
(On top of Mt. Baldy, with Jon and Molly)
The next day, July 13, the year was interrupted by my spinal surgery. Thankfully, surgery went really well (thank you Dr. Holly!) and I bounced back quickly.
(My home for a week while recovering from surgery)
In late September, once I was mostly recovered from surgery, I started a five-week course of radiation therapy. Every weekday, I went to UCLA for a quick radiation blast. I was worried about the side effects, but other than a sour stomach and some fatigue (and the time and hassle of driving to UCLA every day), I was fortunate and was able to mostly continue my life as usual.
I ended up doing four races during the year – and if I add up the distances of all the races (25k, 5k, 6 miles and 10k), I get a little more than a marathon (or something like 300 fewer miles than I raced in 2014!). I was pretty fit for each race, but didn’t specifically train for any of them. That combination equated to decent results, but certainly nothing special.
The other running highlight was coaching Team NutriBullet.
(Team NutriBullet coaches)
It’s a great group of 140 excited runners, eagerly preparing themselves for the LA Marathon, which is now just 4 weeks away. The coaching has also been a good way to keep me engaged in running without doing the serious training that I’ve gotten so used to over the past 8-ish years. And if not for coaching the team, there is absolutely no way I would have subjected myself to the pain of running a 5k or 10k in the fall!
The running is always my focus, but my biggest athletic accomplishment in 2015 was the amount of 0r swimming I did. Prior to 2015, the most I’d ever swum in a year was about 250,000 meters in 2007, right when I was getting into serious triathlon training. In 2015, I swam nearly twice as far. And I did it with four weeks completely out of the pool while recovering from my surgery. If not for the surgery, I would have either totally burned out or easily gone over 550,000 meters. I made it to the pool more than 180 times during the year. Except around the surgery, I swam at least 3 times every week during the year, and some weeks I made it to the pool 5 times. But more importantly than the distance, I came to really love swimming. And I think I got pretty good at it. If I’m not “good” at it, at least I’m more comfortable in the pool than I’ve ever been.
2015 by the numbers:
Swim: 502,706 meters (312 miles)
Cycling (outdoors): 0 miles
Run: 950.3 miles (second least amount of miles in a year since I started tracking all this in 2007)
Total Run Elevation Gain: 118,479 feet
Strength Training/Yoga: 62 sessions
Approximate annual total training/racing time: 390 hours (least amount of time since 2007)
What will 2016 bring?
(Waiting for their little brother)
First of all, and most importantly, it’s going to bring our son. It’ll also probably involve a new job, a change I’ve needed for at least a couple years now. The baby and job seem likely to hit me with a double-whammy right around the same time. I’m confident that I’ll manage to still get some running in, but am going to take that as it comes, especially for the first couple months. I don’t have any races scheduled and I’m not signing up for anything until we’re able to get a little settled with the baby and my job situation stabilizes. If I’m able to train enough, then I’ll consider racing in the late summer or fall. My guess is that, after 2015’s Year of the Fish, swimming will fall by the wayside in 2016. I’ll have to be efficient about everything I do and when I actually have free time, running is so much more efficient than swimming. But I’ll take it as it comes.
Thanks as always for following along!