Dear January

Dear January,

You have really been something. We’ve had quite the battle this year. You’ve bitten and kicked and wrangled with me almost every day. You’ve dragged me around and caused me to re-assess my running. And my supplemental exercise routine. And my diet. You’ve posed a lot of deep, piercing questions. Not sure I have all the answers, but I am working on that.

Now that you’re mere hours away from packing it in for another year, oh worthy opponent, how about we run a little scorecard and see where we stack up against one another?

Let us review these past 31 days, January …

• 60 hours of runwalk. That’s compared to 44 last year. (Score one for Me)

• 22 runs of at least 2 hours. That’s compared to 17 last year. (Me)

• Long-run breakdowns of a 6:09 (Red Eye 50K New Year’s Day), a 5:00, a 4:00, seven 3:00s and 12 2:00s (Seriously me)

• Living Room Yoga sessions: 3 (Draw)

• TRX training sessions: 7 (Me)

• Basketball ref action: 26 total games – 16 high school and 10 youth league (Draw)

• Days I did not run: 8 (January)

• Days I skipped running because the projected wind chill was more than -10F: 3 (Seriously January)

• Days I ran that were single-digit days: 4 (Me!!!)

• Days I ran less than 2 hours: 1. Although that day included a 20-minute tempo block at half-marathon pace … (still … January)

• Fast days: In addition to chunks of the Red Eye run and the aforementioned 20-minute tempo, I also churned out 5 times 7 minutes at 10K race pace, 10 times a 1-minute to 1-minute 45-second hill and another 20-minute tempo at HMP. (All me)

• Total number of push-ups this month: 6,200 (Draw, cuz I would have done fewer than this if the weather conditions hadn’t sucked so badly on several of your days).

So let’s see: Me 6. January 3. And 3 draws.

Truth: You kicked my ass, January. And even though I’m stronger and better and maybe even a little tougher now than I was before you showed up, I’m calling it even.

Thank you, January. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.