Yesterday just updated my global log file. What is this? It's what many do with Strava or similar apps. I write down every session, be it running, walking, biking, swimming, etc. So then, why would I do this "manually" when Strava would do it automatically.
Let's say I enjoy having some form of control on whatever I do, and Strava has a drawback, it's "online" (what do I do if I don't have Internet access?) and besides, back in 2003, when I started to log everything well Strava, was not there. And very likely in 20 years it won't be there any more. But I'll still be interested in knowing what kind of trainings I was doing when things were working well, was what not working, and so on.
So after all these years, what's the conclusion? Well, I know I've done over 30000 miles running, over 60000 miles on a bike. Doesn't make me more clever or attractive, but it's funny to think that on a straight line I would have gone more than once around the planet. Unless it's not a globe?
Also, I noticed my naive conversion table which says:
- 5 miles on a bike -> 1 mile on my feet (alternative: 2h on bike -> 1h on foot)
- 1 mile in the water -> 4 miles on my feet
- 1000 feet elevation -> 1.5 mile on my feet
...works rather well. I tried many other tricks, more or less sophisticated, but that simple one works best. It gives a good indicator of how much effort you throw at the problem.
I also noticed that since 2010 I'm hitting a soft limit of 1000 hours of sport-related activities per year. Activities change, for instance in 2018 with RAAM I biked more than usual but all in all that "about one thousand hours" limit remains stable. Note that 1000 is already quite a lot. Also, I write down everything, including all family stuff (well, maybe not a 300 yards walk, but if it's a walk that lasts a couple hours, I would write it down) and my job commute bike rides as well. All of those done at a very peaceful, gentle pace.
And, as a side note, I never (yet...) went past the 5000k (*) ran per year limit. I've been close to it, but then I got into power-walking and lately I've been really drifting away "because of" the bike. It's interesting to see that "7 miles a day" (about 2500 miles a year) is... a lot, and corresponds to quite some dedication in training. I'm always mildly smiling when hearing someone saying "oh, I run, but not that much, maybe 7 miles a day". Running only 7 miles when you occasionally run and running 7 miles every single day within a year are two completely different things. And my 6 days personal record? Might be a coincidence but it happened the year I had my record yearly mileage. Might be a coincidence...
Also keep in mind those numbers are correct only starting from 2003. For the data before, I had to imagine a bit a (re)write History. Now I score this daily in a Libre Office file, you could for example check the 2018 file, which has just ended.
(*) by default, I use the metric system, so 5000k means more to me than 3000 miles.
