Paradigm shifting

When I started running back in 2006 it was nothing more than a way to distract myself between doing schoolwork or classes at university. At some point I decided to track the distance of my runs. The reasons for doing so have varied from motivating myself, to tracking my progress, to just simply recording my data knowing that I would be able to use it some time later in a retro analysis of my training, to keeping myself on track with my training plan.

In 2006 I logged a total of 603 km's. I was so excited to surpass 500 kilometres, and it felt so important that I wanted to brag about it. 2007 and 2008 saw me not even hit 500 kilometres, but I hit 500 again in 2009 and that felt pretty cool and I thought I was sooooooo awesome. In 2010 I committed to running the death race and for the year I ran over 2000 kilometres, well holy crap I thought  I was so cool, all worrying about the numbers and all that. 2011 was the same total distance as the year before, but felt much different as there was other more important things happening, but still  I focused on the numbers. Right now for the year I've run 3149 km (1957 miles) (I know this because I have a super fun spreadsheet that automatically adds each days numbers up). I find it so amusing how little I want to celebrate reaching this milestone of 2000 miles. Previously I would have been wanting to tell anyone I could that I've done this many miles in the year. But somewhere along the line during the year, as I've worked to make running 4-6 times a week a strong habit, the numbers lost meaning. I have a plan laid out on my tracking spreadsheet, but it's not in distance, it's in minutes. Just getting out there, good enough, whatever you do is whatever you do. And whatever happens during those runs is whatever happens.

Also... here's a silly chart, because I like charts.