Numbers

I have an obsession with numbers. When I went to college, I was initially planning on being an accountant.  That quickly changed, however my love of math and numbers has never gone away.  My wife refers to me as the Human Calculator (not sure that really sounds like a cool super hero name) and will often times just ask me a math problem rather than wasting time typing it into her phone's calculator.

Of course that has translated over to my running.  Runners have so much data available to them it can be overwhelming.  Just during the course of a single run, I worry about things like - How many miles have I ran today?  What is my average pace?  What is my current pace?  How long is this interval?  What is my current heart rate? HOW MANY MORE MAILBOXES UNTIL THE TOP OF THIS HILL?!?!?  That's just during a run.  When I get home, I then analyze the crap out of my run on Strava.  I look at mile splits, my speed on different segments compared to last time (or the overall leaders), my fastest pace (sometimes when I sprint the end of the run), my total elevation gain, the list goes on and on.  And lastly, there are cumulative numbers that I'm always thinking about. How many more miles can I fit in this week? Will I get more than last week?  Am I on track for my monthly goal?  If I increase by 10% each week, how many miles will I end up with for the year?

My current fixation is on my yearly mileage - I have a goal of cracking 2,000 miles in a year for the first time in my life.  I currently sit at 1,735.4 for the year, needing 264.6 more miles for the year, over the course of 92 days, so I need to average..... wait, there I did it again! You can see my problem pretty clearly.  I have such a problem, that I recognize exactly what I am doing, and yet I am still not able to let it go, and I must tell you that I need 88.2 miles per month, or 2.88 miles a day to reach my goal.  If I stay on my current track of 6.36 miles per day, I will hit 2,000 in just 41 days (November 10th).  At that point I will probably decide to shoot for 2,200 or something in that range - 2222 sounds good!

I will say that the problem with the mileage numbers has actually worn me down quite a bit mentally.  My body is holding up well because I have been smart about doing a lot of runs at an easy, conversational pace.  I've taken a slow, cautious approach to building up my mileage, never increasing by more than 10-15% a week.   I have also done quite a bit of interval run-walking - it still all counts as mileage, just like if you do intervals at a race!  I think I won't be chasing a mileage goal next year so I don't have to have that cloud looming over my head all year. 

However, today I signed up to attempt the Barkley Fall Classic 50k again next year.  It is a lottery and it looks like I'll have maybe a 25% chance of getting selected.  But I know how the waitlist for this race works, and many people will drop out before the race.  So I am going to plan a full year around training for that race as if I'm in it.  I want to be ready even if I don't get notice until just a few days before the event.  My training plan will not focus as much on mileage this year, although there will be plenty.  I will be more focused on strength training, climbing, and just general "embrace the suck" activities.  My training goal numbers will be set around total elevation gain, which will just be a new obsession I have to pay attention to all year.

Why am I a slave to numbers like this?  There have been a few times that I have just left the house without my watch - or had the battery die in the middle of a run - and those have been some of my most enjoyable times.  Sometimes I wish I could "lose" my watch and not have all that data at my fingertips.  Although I would later just obsess over how many numbers I missed out on...