April Powers

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

Captain's log.

Caution!  There may be statistics ahead, but I promise there’ll be no equations.

Despite the laudable exhortations of such erudite authors as Richard Askwith and Christopher McDougall to run free, that is without stopwatch or GPS or perhaps even without a route in mind, fans of numbers and statistics such as myself do find that the accumulation of data over time is of enormous benefit when planning and training for a particular outcome, be it a race, a weight loss goal or just a particular level of fitness. I think this is doubly true for people like me who have a natural aversion to routine and whose shift-working career in any case make planning and sticking to a schedule enormously difficult.

That isn’t to say that I haven’t also ‘run free’ from time to time, and indeed there are several lengthy periods missing from my spreadsheets where I recorded no running data at all. And yes, sometimes that is because ahem, I wasn’t running anyway, but there are also long spells where I did run but did not ever record the fact or any of the salient details in my running log. And having tried both recording, and not recording my runs, I can say with considerable certainty that I definitely fall into the ‘prefer to log everything to the n th degree’ camp, and that means complete with charts, forecasts, data dissection analysis and all kinds of numerical nonsense which is fun for me, but about as enticing as garden snail shell collecting to most others.

Of course there’s often a price to be paid for this devotion to data duty, and that has come to light as I’ve gone back over my data recently in order to better plan my running goals for the latter half of this year and onwards into next year. The price one pays for the keeping of this data is the glaring, often brutal, slaps-you-about-the-face honesty of the spread sheet. In good times this unarguable frankness can be reassuring, but with me being such an undisciplined soul, all too often my running log merely reveals just how little running I sometimes do over embarrassing, unfathomable numbers of weeks and sometimes even months.

Oftentimes I blind myself to the reality of how little running I do. For example, take last year. 2015 was memorable for a couple of magical runs overseas whilst on holiday and it’s these I focus on, which tends to make me romanticise the whole deal and think that it was something of a fantastic, athletic year. The cold, hard data on the other hand tells me that in terms of distance run it was in fact probably my worst year since taking up the sport. My total mileage for the calendar year equated to just a few good weeks of solid running at most other times. Even worse, the spreadsheet tells me that 2014 wasn’t a whole lot better either.

The positive spin I put on this is that at least I know where I stand, and have ramped up my running in 2016 slowly and cautiously for the simple reason that in reality I have precious little mileage in my legs and so must be careful. If I didn’t have that cold, hard data staring me down, I’d almost certainly don the rose-tinted glasses and go out and train really hard on the false notion that I’m still fit from the previous year. Then inevitably I would get injured, which would further result in a severe loss of motivation. It’s a cycle I know all too well, but perhaps, just perhaps this year I’ve got the problem sorted, thanks largely due to the unblinking certainty of the spreadsheet.

One other way in which the spreadsheet helps is with the tricky business of weight loss. Whilst I’m not exactly obese, I am several kilograms over my ideal running weight, which is a fair bit in percentage terms and which I’m getting slowly under control. Of course weight fluctuates, and if all you ever do is check the bathroom scales in the morning, it’s very hard not to get a little despondent when for no apparent reason your weight suddenly leaps upward, which seems to happen on a regular basis. It wasn’t until I started charting my weight that I realised this was perfectly normal, and that if you looked at it graphically over time, you see that it is the overall trend which is the thing to watch and daily fluctuations are normal and nothing to be alarmed about. I weigh around 79 kilograms at the moment, but this can fluctuate by as much as a kilogram or more in just 24 hours. Even more alarmingly, it tends to happen after a day of frugality and exercise, i.e. when I least expect it, and which can be very bad news for the motivation gland. Have a look at the chart however, and you easily see clear progress in the right direction. No panic is needed - it all looks good, even if I suddenly put on a kilo or so for no readily explained reason...

With all this in mind, I plod on, enjoying noticeable progress but without (touch wood) risking any injury.

Today’s outing was a modest 5km, but completed at a reasonably tough incline and pace, making it another honest work out and despite its brevity a run that shows marked progress readily confirmed by the scrupulously honest, number munching spreadsheet.

With just three weeks until the Sydney half marathon, I don’t yet know what I may be capable of running, but headway is being made, and I’m enjoying my running. As Askwith and McDougall are at pains to point out, enjoyment is the main point of running, with fitness and attainment of goals a natural by-product of that enjoyment.

And look, after all that, there were hardly any stats at all. Happy days.