Your Year-End Inventory...of Memories

In many businesses you do a year-end inventory. You count and account and all that data helps create a profit/loss statement. As a runner you might do the same thing with your training log, recapping your mileage and races and coming up with your year-end totals. That's valuable information, but something's missing.

In this data driven age, you might have captured your heart rate, mileage and elevation gained and lost on every run for the whole year. Will that capture how your heart raced when you saw the bald eagle soar above you while you ran along the Mississippi River?

Your race stats might record all your personal records (PRs), but do they record that conversation you had with a stranger as you both labored through the middle stages of a tough day of marathoning?

Your favorite finish line photo shows your weary smile, but is there an image of the joy you felt when you found that empty porta-pottie at mile 16? Which smile was bigger?

The data shows you did twenty-three races last year, but does it show how many days you woke up not wanting to run, but went anyway? Is there a reckoning of how you felt before and how you felt after those runs?

You noted your weight, twice a day for the entire year. Did you track how you felt when you ate that banana right before your first long run of the year? Or that gel-block at mile 8?

You went through three pairs of running shoes last year, but do you remember the 'new shoe smell' when you opened the box for pair number 2? Or the old shoe smell when they were on their way out?

As you recap your year, go beyond the numbers and images, and review your memories to recreate the whole experience.. A complete inventory captures all the richness of your year of running. Re-live your journey and memories as you prepare for another.

Happy new year! I think I hear your running shoes calling.