And the word on the trails

Before I get into my running I’m going to list a bunch of my 2012 favourites.

Favourite Song – Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings – Father John Misty

Favourite Album – Allah-Las – Allah-Las

Favourite Book – What is the What – David Eggers (written in 2006 but since I read it this year and it’s my blog, here it is).

Favourite TV Show – Bored to Death (also came out earlier than 2012)

Favourite Movie – Moonrise Kingdom – (Although I haven’t seen Argo, Django Unchained and Dark Knight, and they all look good…)

2012 was a good year although I didn’t have one race which I felt was great.  In past years I usually had a race that was the highlight of my year. Looking back on 2012 my best race was probably my first race, 4th place at Euro Cross Luxembourg.  That race was immediately after my Kenyan training camp.  At the time I didn’t think much of the race figuring that bigger and better things were to come, I guess bigger things were still to come.  It’s funny how things turn out.  A few weeks after Luxembourg I got injured and then recovered well good enough for Around the Bay but that race didn’t go so well, even though it was really fun.

Luxembourg XC – February 2012

My training block for the Olympic marathon was my best preparation for a marathon to date.  My race fell apart because of the heat and lack of ingested carbs but, once again, the overall experience was amazing.  Going to the Olympics has been a goal of mine ever since I surprisingly came close to the Olympic 5000m standard in 2004.  To qualify and then actually stand on the start line of the Olympic marathon was a dream come true.  It definitely made for a very memorable summer.

For the remainder of 2012 I decided to scale back my mileage (140-190 km/week) and train as if I was running 10km XC.  The training went well, I stayed healthy and picked out races I thought would be a lot of fun.  Throughout the fall I was happy with my fitness, pleased with my races and glad I ended with a solid half marathon.  The time wasn’t fast liked I hoped it would be because the heat slowed everyone down but I was happy with my time/placing relative to the stacked field.

All in all 2012 was a solid year for training (second consecutive year over 8000km).  I made breakthroughs in my training even though I didn’t have a breakthrough race.  That sets me up well for 2013.

Another highlight of 2012 was the Road to London documentary that Paul Trebilcock put out in July.  Beginning in July Paul has travelled all over the word as host of a TV show where he and his buddy tackle crazy endurance races.  Now that filming is done for the show (look for the show in February on Travel Escape network) he is editing the documentary.  For those who saw it in the summer the final edition will have much more running footage even though the length of the documentary will be about 15 minutes shorter.  Paul plans on releasing the documentary online by the end of January.  Stay tuned.

No end of the year review is complete without a fail compilation