With 2024 coming to a close I managed to just scrape through with my yearly goal of 1500km, having to go out on NYE for one last run (I had 7km to go, so I ran 10km just to be safe).
Compared to 2023 where I managed to hit my 1500km goal in November, hitting it on the last day of the year was… different.
The raw stats
Again, looking at my Strava profile, here’s the breakdown of what was 2024:
- Total distance: 1503.3km
- Total time: 129 hours, 12 minutes (or 5 days, 9 hours, 12 minutes)
- Total activities: 208
- Elevation gain: 10,163m
My biggest month was November at 166km, followed by August at 162km. I’m not surprised by November being the biggest month, I went pretty hard there when I realised I might make it to 1500km, if I really stepped up the distance (nothing like a bit of pressure to get you moving).
I also had a bunch of gym sessions and some paddle boarding in there, but Strava is pretty terrible at giving a full aggregation view (outside of their “year in sport” which you can’t retrieve after the year ends), so that’s just the pure running stats.
Looking at the data vs the past few years, it’s a pretty similar amount of time spent running, 2023 was 133 hours and 2022 was 129 hours so it seems that year on year I spend about the same amount of time running, I just use that time differently.
Goals
So what changed from 2023 to 2024? Well, I’d say that it was ultimately my goal around what I wanted out of running. For the past few years I’d been pushing harder and harder to get faster and faster, but in 2024 I decided I wanted to focus on the basics and just get out there and run.
My wife also signed up for her first marathon (she also said it would be her only one, but she’s signed up again this year!), so I wanted to support her training, leaving the bulk of available running time to her.
We also spent a month overseas on holidays, which naturally resulted in a drop in running time. I did manage to get another Parkrun tourist in, running Highbury Fields in London and clocking a 19.30 (first sub-20 outside of Australia). I also went for a run around Tuscany which was some amazing scenery (and one particularly brutal hill). I capped off the trip running around Rome and getting selfies at all the major landmarks.
Training and races
I did do two races this year, City2Surf and the 10km at the Sydney Marathon (while my wife ran the full). Since I wasn’t really that focused on races though, I didn’t really do any specific training for most of the year - sure as the events got closer I was a bit more structured, following the approach I’d used over the past few years (you can read them in last years post, I won’t rehash here).
One thing I decided to do this year for the first time was to gauge my fitness each quarter with a 3km time trial. For this, I picked a dead flat 3k loop around a nearby oval (although I had to move for Q3 and Q4 as the park/path was flooded), went out in the same shoes each time for consistency, and ran it as hard as I could. Here’s the time using the Elapsed Time from Strava:
Q1 is a bit of an outlier as the moving time is like 10:08, but that’s because I went out waaaaaaaaay too hard and had to pause about half way to ensure the water I’d had stayed down, so while on paper the splits look strong, it’s not an accurate reflection of the outcome.
I’m pretty happy with the progression over the course of the year, and I think it’s an accurate reflection of how the year panned out. I’m not surprised that the last one was the fastest as it was on the back of the two races I did, so the training level was at its peak. I plan to continue this into 2025, and I’ll be interested to see what the Q1 time is this time, given the increased load I saw through the end of 2024, even though it wasn’t focused on speed work.
City2Surf was a pretty standard affair for me this year with a 58:29, about a minute behind my PB from 2023. I was expecting this, the event was the busiest I’d run in and given the rather average training I’d put in, being able to pull out a solid sub-60 was a good result.
Sydney Marathon 10km
Yeah, pretty solid effort there! My goal was to run a sub-40, as I’d never run sub-40 in a 10k event before (I also hadn’t run a 10k event in a very long time, but that’s beside the point!), I’m more happy that I was in the top 100 finishers, which I think is a pretty solid achievement.
Because I had a goal I went into the race with a plan - run fast 🤣. Jokes aside, that was really pretty much the game plan. If you look at the Strava activity, it’s clear that it’s a net-downhill course, with a lot of front-loaded downhill, in it was over 50m down in the first 5k, meaning that you can push harder for the same effort. On the day, this got coupled with a hectic amount of wind, which was a bit of a tailwind coming down from North Sydney and over the bridge.
I started a bit back in the pack, and managed to catch the 40 minute bus at the 5k mark, as we were headed into the flat area. This gave me a good indicator on where I was tracing and what I’d need to push for the back half of the course. I was able to push really hard through the 7th km, which was helped by a massive tailwind (actually copped a blast at one point that nearly caused me to trip, I did clip my foot on my other leg in a stride) but I knew I’d need this as the 8/9 km point was a rough climb, which got made even harder with the wind whipping down the street at us. I heard the pacers behind me, and I knew I had to push hard to keep in front of them (and I was thankful I’d banked some time), and then I could push again on the final bit of downhill to the finish.
After the race was done I picked up my gear bag and went to find my wife on course, where I ran with her for a bunch. I ended up doing an extra 15k post my race… so maybe I could have pushed harder 😁.
Wrapping up
So that’s 2024 in running for me. I’m pretty happy with how the year went, I didn’t have any injuries or major setbacks, I hit my goal, and I got back to the basics of “just running”. I’m not sure what 2025 is going to look like yet, I’m eying an event in April and I’ll do City2Surf again, mostly because I enjoy it, but I’m not sure what else I’ll do (probably the 10k at the Sydney Marathon again, assuming it comes back).
I’m also going to keep up the quarterly time trials, I think they’re a good way to gauge fitness and see how I’m progressing, and I’m going to keep up the focus on just getting out there and running.