Happy Birthday to Foster Runs! Once again, this post is more a mental note for myself, but you might also find it interesting.
Number of years: FOUR! I doubt if Dai Thomas expected it to still be going after four years when he helped me start it back in 2007!
Number of posts: 83 (110 in year 3, 102 in year 2, 156 in year 1 – I’ll report the figures this way around below to make it easy to see any progression). There have been less posts as Kim & I have seen fewer films (and I have also got out of the habit of writing about them and other non-running items) and I have been commenting on Management Today and HBR… which you can follow via Disqus.com/David_J_Foster if you’re interested. I’ve also recently started a new ‘blog’ at EnglandGardenGang.org to follow the fortunes (or otherwise) of a micro-movement designed to improve our shared urban areas.
Number of runs: 72 (92, 63, 67) including 12 short ‘day-after’ runs earlier this year as I started to increase my mileage
Mileage: 653 (726, 538, 512)… no marathon training but still quite a bit more that the first two years
Hours spent running: 113 (113, 84, 87)…er, obviously running quite a bit more slowly than last year then!
Average run: 9.4 miles in 1.34 (7.89 in 1.24, 8.14 in 1.20, 8.07 in 1.31). This helps explain the slower pace, more so if I exclude the 12 machine runs of 1 mile which makes the average run 10.7 miles in 1.51.
Average speed: 5.8mph (6.38, 6.05, 6.15) which is not surprising in view of the increased (age and) average distance… in fact 26 (36%) of my runs this year were over 2 hours, whilst 45 (62%) were greater than 10 miles.
Average minutes per mile: 10.4 (9.4, 9.9, 9.65) Slower than a slow thing!
Worst month distance: 31.6 in December 2010 (10.4 May 10, 13.6 Jan 09, 22.3 Feb 08).
Best month distance: 68 miles in Jan 2011 (157 in March 10, 62 Apr 09, 68 Nov 07). This was surprising, but you can see that there is less variance in the months… in fact the average monthly mileage was 52 (against 61, 40 and 44)
Total mileage to date since start of blog: 2432 miles… yikes, imagine if I hadn’t kept running around in cicles!
Time spent running since start of blog: 400 hours (50 eight-hour days)
Visitors according to Clustermaps: 1722 (1479, 1496, 2906 for year 1, the first year being higher as a by-product of my work with Qype.com). My aim is to increase the number of visitors this year, so please recommend it to anyone you think might find it interesting!
From number of countries: 44 against 38 last year
Generally speaking this has been an even more enjoyable year for me than previous ones, despite (in fact, probably because of) the increased average distance. One reason for this is the absence of races, but I am clearly also becoming a stronger runner.
To those of you who have stopped by at FosterRuns.com to read my inane blabbering’s, thank you and please stick around to join me vicariously on my onward journey! Even better, come and join me for a run!
To those with whom I have run in this and previous years, it’s been an honour and I sincerely hope that I’ve portrayed you well! Let’s run some more!
Hey, leave me a piece of birthday cake!