Data Freak + Brookings Marathon

I am 100% a data freak.  I love to analyze and compare my running data.  Over the winter break from school, I found myself with ZOMG so much time!  And one of my projects was to go through my running log to notate my highest to lowest mileage months since I started running somewhat seriously 3 years ago.  As I was starting to creep up on my highest weekly mileage ever last week (HEYO!), I decided I wanted to look at all my highest weekly mileages, so I ranked the top 10-15 of those as well.  I also had to break down which race I was training for, because what good is data if you could seek out corresponding relationships in the data and your race performance?!?!?!  So fun.  And I'm being so serious here.

Another fun feature that my running log awards me is graphs.

Marshall, you're doing charts and graphs at work!?!?

(a pie chart of his favorite bars, which followed a bar chart of his favorite pies, natch.)

After reviewing the mileage for last spring, and last fall, aka Fargo Marathon training and Philadelphia Marathon training, I noticed that my 3 highest mileage weeks for training so far are already above my three peak weeks for the last two rounds of training.  I'm not surprised that I've beat out Philly's training, because that was... very last minute, but I honestly thought I'd trained like an all star last spring.  Maybe I didn't.  Hmm...  Anyway, this comparison left me with a huge sense of accomplishment and helped to motivate me to keep it up.

Speaking of keeping it up.  I realized that I hadn't registered for the marathon yet.  I think a little piece in my brain wanted me to be 100% sure I wasn't going to have another marathon meltdown.  And while it's not completely out of the question, I'm really loving training.  Which is the whole point of running these dang races, right?

(Imagine a sweet, congrats on your registration for the marathon screen shot here. Sadly I didn't get a cool one after I registered.  booo!)

So I'm signed up.  In blood. I'll be there.

Let the marathon nightmares continue.  :)