Channeling My Inner Data Geek

Yesterday was our third "it's too cold and we've closed school" day this year--a record in my 25 years of teaching.  Canadian-born-and-mostly-raised Hubster lamented the sad state of wimpy children in the Twenty-First Century, but I enjoyed the unexpected day off.

It gave me a great chance to unleash my inner Data Geek.

OK, maybe it's not so "inner"--I get grief from my skating buddies on a regular basis about my unnatural affair with my stopwatch and my little data notebook.  But yesterday was extreme even for me.

I knew that, since I began CrossFit in early July of this year, I have done more workouts than I did during the same time period last year...the problem is, I didn't know how many more.  This was a state of affairs that I simply could not allow to continue.

So I spent much of the day yesterday staring at this:

That's some of my data notebooks from 2006 to the present (some had already disgorged their information and had been re-stacked in the family room to make space on the table), along with a chart I made, a pen and correction tape, and some of the massive amount of caffeine required to complete the task.  Oh, and my glasses.  After being rather smug about the fact that, at 50, I didn't yet need reading glasses, I suddenly found myself, a month ago, needing to take off my "regular" glasses for reading and closeup work.  "Cheaters" can't be far behind...

Anyway, what I did was simply count the number of workouts each month from January of 2006 through December 2013, and then add up the yearly totals.  I know this is a rough measure of "amount I worked out in a given year" because I didn't add up the actual time of the workouts, but in general they're between one and two hours so the total number of workouts per month and year are still, I would think, fairly relevant.

What I found was interesting.  In 2006, when I had an online coach, I did 179 workouts.  2007 was when I started getting coached by TieGuy, and my workouts jumped to 216--a 20% increase, if I'm doing the math correctly.  2007 was a very successful year for my skating.  2008 and 2009 were both 208 workouts, and then 2010, the year I was diagnosed hypothyroid and Coach TieGuy moved out of state, I dropped to 186. Probably not coincidentally, 2010 was not a very good year for my skating.  2011 Dropped lower, to 179 hours (although I did have a pretty successful season), and then 2012 was the winner for low volume and bad skating at 151 hours (I partly blame a bad summer of adjusting thyroid meds, which led to lots of skipped workouts, which led to a bad winter).  2013 started off on the same foot, with only a modest increase (80 versus 73) in workouts through the end of June.

Then I started CrossFit July 9.

By the end of 2013 I had done 195 workouts, an increase of around 30% for the year but actually 47% over the last 6 months.

That's a BIG increase for an old lady!

I know that CrossFit workouts don't directly target my skating muscles so I don't know how much they will impact skating results...I was more interested in what volume increase I had been able to handle, and how my volume compared to seven years ago.  I'm surprised--and impressed--that I've (knock on wood and cross your fingers) not yet gotten majorly sick or overtrained or sustained an overuse injury, given the pretty drastic increase in my workout volume.  I credit better recovery practices--foam rolling, chiropractic care, good supplements, and more mobility work and consistent warmups than I've done in the past.

Oh, yeah...and luck.

At any rate, I'm happy with the increased work, but I'm also happy that my racing schedule dictates that I start tapering now.  I'm starting to feel a bit sore and tired and beat up, which is definitely a good time to be cutting back on the volume.  When the racing season is done, though, I'm looking forward to being able to increase workout volume even more when (after a nice rest break in March) I start up the 2014 season in mid-April.

Gotta see if I can beat those 2007 numbers in 2014!