End of Year Report

Well, 2007 ended up with me 20 pounds lighter, 7 minutes faster on my 5K, overall healthier, and much more motivated to keep this trend going than when the year started.
This is how my year went. I completed 157.2 miles in 2,823.5 minutes, which is an 18 minute average. Not very far or very fast, but plenty of room for improvement.

January through June were no help at all since they included little to no exercise and a rather bad attitude.
July through mid-August were the beginning of getting healthy. I read an article about a group that "walked" to Baghdad as a way to support the troops. I decided to use the office building steps to do the same thing. I found a map that said it was 6,432 miles from my town to Baghdad and did the math to determine that I would have to do 107.2 flights of stairs to reach my goal. I started with 17 flights and added more every week until six weeks later I had done it and was down 6 pounds to boot!
I took about a week to find another goal and finally decided to start walk/running. The first day I walked out and back on my 1/10th of a mile driveway, it took about 15 minutes. Then I marked out a 1/5 mile circle in a hayfield and started walk/running. A mile and a half of that took me 30 minutes. About a month after that I started circling the edges of three rolling hayfields. Three miles of that took me 75 minutes.
In November, due to the weather I started using the equipment in the fitness room. Unfortunately, I started pushing myself a bit too hard and hurt my knee. I also quit losing weight about then. I can run and walk further than ever, but I quit burning calories.
In December I started looking for ways to fix the problem. In the end I have decided to slow down the pace, but not the miles. I am still walking those hayfields. Yesterday I finished four and a half slow, but 70% heart rate managed miles.
I do have a schedule to follow, in January I have to do six miles, February is seven miles, March is 8 miles, and so on. I also plan to complete my first 10K (6 miles) race in March and a Half Marathon (13 miles) in September. I have a lot of miles to do before I get there though.
I am also going back to the basics. The stairs are coming back into my day and I will be doing very light work in the fitness room at lunch, then more after work, or come home to the hayfields or bike. Long and slow. Everyday.