Miles go by in 2011

As most of you know, I began walking this year and progressed to beginning to run mid summer. Because my parents used to run & compete in road races, I knew all about tracking mileage and speed. Runkeeper is an interesting freebie app I have on my phone. It uses the GPS to track distance, speed, and route which I can view on the phone or on the website with more details. I had downloaded it soon after the phone purchase to use when we walked the trails at the park. I used it a few times, but that was it.

Somehow I remembered this app when I began walking. I would use it most times I ventured out, but not everytime. Occasionally when there was a certain type of cloud cover it did not want to get a gps signal. Then, there were times I just didn't have any pockets to stash it while I was moving. Most of the summer running shorts only come with a little "key" size pocket...nothing big enough for a phone. I bought a handy dandy Spibelt which is just big enough for the phone, driver's license, and car keys to solve this problem. Still, there were plenty of times I went out and did not keep track of the miles. During several of my races, the days I went out for the mail or paper and went to the corner and back, hiking around in the fall...or just didn't care about time & distance.

Runkeeper was my main tracker with Endomondo as a second app used to track when I walked with family. Their walking pace is slower than my running pace. Wanted to keep my average up :-). Both of these apps have made improvements and upgrades this past year...gps locating works the same on both for me. Both have web sites available to review stats, etc. One advantage I like about Runkeeper is I can put in "notes" for the activity on the phone before I save. Little things like it was windy, my shoe came untied, I did walk/run intervals, hot enough to melt... Runkeeper was my exercise log for the year. One feature recently added is the option of audio cues. It can be set at a distance of your choosing to "voice" your speed, pace, etc. This is handy when running a new area, but not wanting to look at the phone every so often to check time & distance passed.

I had not even planned on adding up my miles until many of my Daily Mile & Twitter running buddies started posting their totals. This made me curious. And that is the point of this post, to state how far I went this year.

Okay, so my total of TRACKED miles for 2011 is 313.83. This includes walking, running, hiking, and biking miles.
Total tracked running miles is 130.3. Not too shabby for taking up running at the end of June.

In case you were wondering, there is no particular mileage goal for 2012. The goal is one special big race, and many smaller ones. And possibly the 12 for 12 (at least one race each month).

Here is to a year of improvement in my times and to continue on the quest of fitness.

Jazz hands!