January In Review

Whelp.  First things first; I made it all thirty days in a row, running every day.  Second, my legs are veeeery excited for the break.

In retrospect, so far the weirdest thing for me was coming home this evening and realizing I don't have to go out running tonight.  In just a month it's become so ingrained into me that that was my baseline expectation for how my evening would go.  I think this will have been a nice jump-start to get me back into running and I can definitely see myself going multiple times a week, although I'm going to shoot for fewer runs but longer distance;  need to start getting ready for Tough Mudder!

Now for some interesting stats from January:

Total Miles:  40.38

Total Time:  9:03:34

Average Pace:  13:27

Approximate Calories Burned:  4342

My average pace was definitely lacking in this.  The first part of the month started off very strong, and I'd mix in some 'let's see how fast I can do a mile' runs, but I really needed a rest day toward the end of the month and my lagging pace reflected that.  That aside, I'm pretty happy with just over 40 miles run.  Out of everyone I'm friends with on Nike+, that barely squeaked me into most run miles for the month.  (Booyah Peter!)

The calories burned are of interest also.  4342 is a rather abstract number, so I like how my cousin Sharon views it, in number of beers burned off.  In this case I burned off almost twenty nine beers in the course of the month!  Or, I basically made up for two full days of eating by running.  Not too shabby I'd say.

This experience has been empowering and I'm feeling solid about rolling into my February challenge of zero soda or energy drinks.  Based on some very rough napkin math, I'll probably be cutting out about 600-800 empty calories a day plus a ton of sugar.

One twelfth of the way done!