2008 Year in Review

Here's a look back at 2008.

1) Completion of a longgg 15-month deployment. I spent 2007 and the first quarter of 2008 in Iraq. It was a good deployment for me and I was very fortunate to run and stay fit while deployed.

2) PRs. 2008 was no doubt my best running year despite being injured all of April/May and the last week of December. I set new PRs in almost every distance (10K, 15K, half-marathon and marathon). I could have easily ran PRs for the other distances had I entered a race.

3) Amsterdam Marathon - 2:35:37 (PR). This was my breakthrough marathon, finally running sub-6 minute pace (5:56) for the distance and improving my PR by almost 3 minutes.

4) Rotterdam Half Marathon - 1:13:39 (PR) - In addition to Amsterdam Marathon this was one of my best race performance of 2008. It was a 2-minute PR and the race boosted my confidence leading into Amsterdam.

5) The traveling year. I traveled to and ran in six countries (Iraq, Kuwait, US, Japan, Netherlands, Germany), three states (NC, MN, CA) and one island (Guam) . It was an extraordinary experience running in different conditions and temperatures from 110+ to 20 degrees (F), desert to roads and trails, mountains to flatlands and humidity to dry air.

To sum things up 2008 was a busy year. It was an excellent year of running. Interestingly, I didn't even reach 3000 miles (ended up with 2847 miles) and still set many PRs. I look forward to these PRs being broken in 2009.

Happy New Running Year!