End-of-Season Housecleaning

“And early though the laurel grows, it withers quicker than the rose.”
—A.E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad, Lyric XIX

Year’s end is time to cast off some of the accumulations of a season of running – awards that may now seem meaningless, and shoes with 500+ miles that are still wearable. Here are several ways to do it.

Medals from marathon events only can be donated to



while there are numerous ways to dispose of gently-worn but still-serviceable shoes:

Give Your Sole
2091 Raymer Avenue, Unit C
Fullerton, CA 92833

Shoe4Africa
P.O. Box 6943
Eldoret
Kenya

Soles4Souls

The Shoe Bank
205 Becky Lane
Rockwall, TX 75087

Shoes too worn for further use can be sent to the Nike Reuse-a-Shoe Program, which grinds up each shoe component for re-use as athletic surfaces. Send to

Nike Grind Processing
3552 Avenue of Commerce
Memphis, TN 38125

Happy New Year!

New running year, that is, which (at least for me) runs more or less from one Thanksgiving to the next. As is customary at the turn of the Gregorian calendar, it’s time to take stock of the season just concluded, and look forward to the next.

Here are annual volume totals for the past season, as well as 2007-08:

2009 – 139.5 hours (126 land/13.5 pool); 10 races (eight 5K, two 5M); 90 injury days

2008 – 163 hours; 12 races (ten 5K, two 5M); 0 injury days, 19 sick days

2007 – 93.8 hours; 6 races (five 5K, one 5M); 104 injury days

Given the two injury periods, I can’t be too unhappy with results from 2009, since I nearly made my 5K goal of 20:40, and surely would have come very close to the 5M goal (34:10) had there been an event of that length available in late October/early November. Thus, it would seem that with uninterrupted training, perhaps another 20 seconds of improvement in 5K time can be realized, so for 2010, the goal-predictions are:

5K – 20:30
5M – 33:50
13.1 miles – 1:35-1:37

For the immediate future, I hope to train consistently as possible through whatever good weather remains in 2009, and then during the snows of January and February. That’s really where the foundation for any consistent success is laid.

With respect to training objectives, I hope to consistently hit 6 hours per week when the weather is better, and perhaps 180+ hours for the season.