Well, I realized I skipped the Q3 update, but here is the year end summary, and thoughts on next year.

The big goal was total elevation, which I set at 250k, significantly higher than prior years. That includes all sports, not just running — so add hiking, walking, biking, etc. With COVID hitting, Kelly and I both signed up for the Great Virtual Race Across TN, which had us both walking a lot more. Also, there was the Ascent Challenge Memorial Day weekend got me climbing a ton — 31k in a week! (That was all running…) And finally, the addition of virtual riding via Zwift also contributed. With all that said, I crushed my goal with well over 300k of climb, and have set a goal of 365k in 2021! Not sure how likely that is — depends on if I do any more virtual events, etc.

Next up is my time goal, which I set somewhat arbitrarily at 500. After looking through “The Uphill Athlete” last year, I realized my yearly hours trained were pretty tiny compared to some athletes! Now, this number does include a lot of hiking and walking — but only walks when it was somewhat of a workout, not just walks that were super casual. And again, I hit this target with just (barely) over 500 hours. I went ahead and bumped this to 550 for 2021, mostly because I want to (need to!) get serious about strength training now that I am 50, and I have made it a goal to lift 50 hours in 2021. Now, I may include mobility and balance in one umbrella – I’ve not quite decided. But I do some of that kind of stuff outside of a training session — just when I walk by a balance disc or am sitting in front of the TV.

Next up is running, for which I fell just short of my 1000 mile goal with 978 miles. I’m not disappointed in that at all, as I feel like a more well rounded athlete doing all the other sports again, especially mountain biking! I’ll keep this at 1000 for 2021, though a lot of that will depend on which races happen next year!

And finally biking…. I set an aggressive goal of 2000 miles, but I rode the mountain bike more than expected (as apposed to Zwift or road riding), which is always going to be fewer miles per hour. But I had a blast doing it and wouldn’t change that. I’ll probably change the 2021 goal to 1500 or 1750, but I am Zwift’ing more now than last year, so maybe 2000 is within shot and I should just keep it the same?

I doubt I’ll keep up with quarterly updates going forward — not sure anyone is really interested. 🙂 But I do enjoy tracking this kind of stuff, so will continue to do so. A shout out to the Elevate App, which is chrome extension which enables me to track this level of detail from my Strava data..

So a table to show 2021 goals:

Elevation (all sports)	365,000′
Running	1000 miles
Biking	2000 miles
Strength Training	50 hours
Total time (all sports)	550 hours