2011 has truly been my transformation year for me. I lost a ton of weight, really increased my running mileage, improved my fitness, and best of all became a healthier person. The year began with me doing 2.5 miles daily. I wasn’t really until May when I decided that I wanted to lose weight that I started increasing my mileage and watching my diet. I really hadn’t lost any weight since October 2010 when I started running as my diet was really poor before then. Basically I just counted every mile as 100 calories burned and I counted every calorie that I put in my body. I also gave myself a cheat day once a week, where I ate as much of and anything I wanted.
Running wise I increased to 3.7 miles daily in May and then quickly again to 4.5 miles daily. Then I increased quickly again to 5 miles daily. It was at this 5 mile point when I started doing long runs every week; 10 miles, 15 miles, 20 miles. I scaled this back eventually though and just started running 10 miles daily in the beginning of August (sometimes as a straight run and sometimes split into two 5 mile runs.) In hindsight it would have been better preparation for the Marathon I did in October if I kept up with the long runs weekly, but wrapping my head around doing 70 miles a week was tough mental hill for me to get over.
By September I had lost roughly 30 to 35 pounds and had been running almost everyday for a year continuously (1st week in October would have been one year), so I decided to register for my first Marathon ever, The Grand Rapids Marathon. So, on October 16 I ran my first marathon in 2:56. You can read about my experience at my Grand Rapids Marathons Review.
After the GR Marathon, I really wanted to take a day or so off, but I HAD to keep my running going so the very next day I got back into the swing of things doing a 5 mile walk/run (my legs were really sore. About a week later I kicked my daily milage up to 12 miles daily (some straight 12 mile runs and some 6 mile am/pm splits). I also did a handful of 15 degree incline treadmill workouts which was a first for me (I plan to start incorporating more stuff like this into my workouts in 2012.)
Toward the last week of December 2011, I started running 15 miles daily and actually just recently in 2012 had my first 100 mile running week.
One other thing I forgot to mention is I was also doing a bit of weight training once or twice a week along with calithenics when I started my weight loss kick; pushups, crunches, squats, pullups (definitely need to become stronger at pullups). I did 50 pushups in a row for the first time ever and worked my way up to 150 squats in a row (could have done more squats) Although I let the weight training and calithenics fade away toward the end of the summer. I want to get back into a calisthenics routine for 2012.
All in all though I feel like I have made a tremendous amount of progress in 2011 and it makes me even more excited thinking about what 2012 has in store for me.