30 Years ago

Log entry from Day 1



On a cold November day in 1978 I showed up at the Marshall Middle School track for the first Pie Run. I had never been involved in any organized running and only went to this race because I had done well in the President’s physical fitness test. The test involved sit-ups, curls, some other events, and a 300 yard run. The 300 yard run was the only thing I had done well in. Maybe I did well because I was pretty active, playing flashlight tag and other physical games as a kid. Anyway, I showed up at the race and ran in jeans and a jacket (it was very cold). I ran 5:23 and finished in fourth place. I was very disappointed as the top three finishers won a pie, hence the name “Pie Run”. Mike Granfield, the track coach at Billerica High School, told me he’d see me at practice. I was a little confused, “what practice?” Mike said “track practice, you are going to run indoor track”. It sounded good to me. On 12/06/1978 I went to my first track practice and Mike gave us all a photocopied training log. He mentioned the importance of keeping track of your mileage and I took that to heart. Thirty years later I’ve logged every mile I’ve run and track a whole bunch of other stuff. I still use a paper training log, but I also have everything on computer spreadsheets.

So here are my totals for thirty years of running:
103,846, Avg. = 9.48 miles per day.
794 injuries (with ankle topping the list at 202) for a total of 1,471 days off.
So the average that I ran, on days that I actually ran is 10.95 miles.
High day = 62
High week = 140
High month= 513
High year= 5,113

I’ve raced 1,033 times in 33 states and 12 countries for a total of 6,319.7 miles (avg. 6.16 miles).
The break down of type of races is somewhat evenly distributed. There could be some argument as to how I designated if a race was XC, Trail, or Mountain. I usually went with what the race director called it, some XC races are probably more of a trail race (I think gnarly which is of course very subjective). I don’t count the nearly 200 Orienteering races as they are rarely mass-start head-to-head competitions so they aren’t really a “race” at least in the traditional sense. I’m not diminishing O-meets as the competition is fierce; they are just different from running races.

474 Road races
116 XC races
109 Mountain races
102 Indoor track
102 Outdoor track
68 Trail races
60 Snowshoe races
2 Tri (never again!)