Andrew Schrauben

On December 31 I went for my 128th and final run of the year, taking Haven and Beacon with me while Amanda tried out our new camera despite the sleet coming down. As you can see, we caught up to Amanda near the riverwalk behind the old school building. It was a slow recovery run because the day before I surprised myself by running five miles in just 36 minutes! I had no idea I could keep up that pace for even three miles. It's nice to see such improvement once in a while.

During 2005 I logged 625 miles, compared to 284 in 2004. The average was 4.9 miles per run, although the distances ranged from 1.4 (trying out a new pair of trail shoes) to 26.2 (the Grand Rapids Marathon) miles. I spent a total of 105 hours on the run in 2005. I don't have any specific training goals for 2006 - yeah it'd be cool if I passed 1000 miles but I have to be careful that I don't overtrain just to add up the miles. I would, however, like to try a local 50-mile race this fall, plus another marathon sometime.

2006's training indeed got started today, running 11.6 miles along the North Country Trail. Man, I was tired from staying up late for the new year (Amanda and I were throwing snowballs for Haven and Beacon in the backyard at midnight) and I ran pretty slow. But I lasted for the 2:25 it took me to get back home.

By the way, we just picked up our first foster dog of the year! A young lab/shepherd mix named Buttercup has joined us for a week or so.