I Hate Math but I Love Numbers - Staying Motivated through the Holidays

About 6 weeks ago, I looked at my running log and thought, "Awesome! I have 2 months until the end of the year, I'm going to hit a thousand miles EASY!" I was sitting at like 930 miles for the year so far. For the last few years, my standard running goal has been to run at least a thousand miles in each year. The first time I accomplished this, I was in Las Vegas with Robert celebrating New Year's Eve and our wedding anniversary...and at 6 pm on New Year's Eve, I was on a treadmill running 7 miles because I needed to make a thousand. (I think/hope I'm not alone here with silly goals like this. There was a storyline on a recent Modern Family in which Phil set and accomplished a similar goal of walking "to Canada" on an elliptical trainer. So at least the guy who wrote that part of that episode knows what I'm talking about here.) That experience taught me two things about myself - that I enjoy fun, ridiculous, useless goals. And once they're set, I'll do anything to achieve them.

So...6 weeks ago when I looked at my running log, I could have stopped there. But I didn't. Instead, something in my brain said, "Ok, you're going to get a thousand running miles easy. But how does it compare to last year?" Hmm. Now I needed 77 more miles, to make it to 1077 and match last year. And I could have stopped there. But I didn't. Instead, I thought, "Hey, I wonder how this year's bike and swim mileage stacks up to last year's?" The bike was easy peasy to achieve, just 200ish more miles. But the swim was not such a piece of cake.

I sent a note to Coachie - "In each of the next five weeks, I need to swim 8625 yards, bike 30 miles, and run 29.8 miles." and she replied back - "No problem." I saw her the next night for a pain cave trainer session, and we talked about the goals. She said she totally understood because she loves numbers too. And then she said something like, "I think you got this, you can totally run 30 miles before the end of the year *eyeroll*" and I said, "You know those miles I sent you were per WEEK, right? Not total." And she said,"Yikes! Ok, yeah, I think you can still do it for the bike and run...but probably not the swim goal."

And with that I set out to do it. I crammed 30 miles of running into the next 3 days. Of course, then I promptly went back to Las Vegas on vacation for Robert's birthday and missed an entire four days of workouts. As soon as we got home, I once again became laser focused on the goal. This meant that in addition to my usual daily workouts, I was running 1 or 2 miles at work during lunch with a couple of my coworkers (trying not to get too sweaty while running during the workday is fun - and by fun I mean not fun). I've been adding an extra 200 or 500 or 1000 to the end of swim workouts.

I'm 100% aware that all of this is "junk miles" but I don't care. I have become obsessed with making this happen! So here I am with 11 days left in the year and I need 12,000+ yards of swimming and 55.5 miles of running before end of day on December 31. I met the bike goal earlier this week (woo hoo!).

I told the girls about my ridiculous self-inflicted challenge, and Aixa decided to join me on my quest - she's aiming for 1000 miles of running this year too, and she's got about 50 miles to go. I think we're going to make it. And FABULOUS LINDA, our fishy friend, the high school swim coach, has determined that she'll help me out by swimming a 10K with me ON CHRISTMAS DAY - my birthday - how cool is that!!?

We'll see how this all shakes out. It has certainly made the last few weeks of training more fun and motivating at a time of year when it can often be anything but. Happy holidays!