After weeks of June-like weather, March returned to Hog Heaven today: 39 degrees, overcast, and blustery. No fun at all. Especially after all that warm sunshine over the past few weeks. But, March is waning fast and April promises . . . What? I'd settle for April. But, who knows anymore?
I did a one-hour maintenance run yesterday while it was still June. (O.K., June-like.) This morning, three months earlier, I did a one-hour hike for cross training. Tomorrow's schedule calls for a 1.5 hour maintenance run. Right now, Thursday looks like the best day for this week's long run. If that holds, I'll cross train on Wednesday and try to run 24 slow and easy miles on Thursday. This after bonking at 20 miles on my last long run.
I ran across this survey from Running USA recently: http://www.runningusa.org/statistics.
Here are some of the highlights: More and more runners are finishing races. I interpret that to mean that 1) more people are running, and 2) they are signing up for--and finishing--more races. For 2010, the latest year for which data is available, there were some 13 million finishers of road races. That's a 13% increase just since 2005.
And, as anyone who's been paying attention could tell you, women are responsible for much of the increase. In fact, females were 53% of all race finishers in 2010. Female race finishers almost doubled in the decade to 2010, ballooning from 3.6 million to 6.9 million. YOU GO GRL!
Even as other races have grown, the half marathon has led the way with the number of finishers increasing 200% between 2000 and 2010. Marathon finishers rose only 44% over the same period. Again, females have driven the half marathon growth.
Let's make 2012 another record year.
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