The Crash

I once said to someone, ‘What’s the use of running, if you can’t log it on a spreadsheet?’ Over the course of the past several years, I have developed an addiction that links my physical activity with Microsoft Excel. Actually, before I hit the hard stuff, I started on Lotus 1-2-3 back in the 80’s.

I maintained a spreadsheet file for every year that provided a complete history of every step that I have taken. Among other things, the file would include:

* The date and time of all runs
* The distance covered and the time
* The pace
* The projected yearly pace
* The course
* A description of the course
* Who I ran with, mostly alone or with my kids


The spreadsheets also had other sections, like the several marathon training programs that I never executed as well as training programs for shorter races that I did complete. For a period of time I was an avid fitness swimmer. I have to qualify the term swimmer, with the word ‘fitness’ because, I swim very slow. My swim workouts and other cross training are also recorded for time in my logs.

One day in June of this year, I was at a meeting at work and came back to my desk and saw very strange things on my monitor. I rebooted my laptop and the kept getting the same weird messages. I called the Help Desk and after a short time we concluded that the hard drive on the laptop had crashed. I am one of those bad people at work that fails to copy all important documents to the file server regularly where it is backed up nightly.

I knew that most, if not all of my important work files could be retrieved from my E-Mail attachments. In my line of work, anything important is eventually E-Mailed to someone. When the demise of my computer sunk in, my concern was immediately for my lost training logs.

The Help Desk guys at work looked into sending the hard drive for restoration, but the cost was over $1,000. I could not in good conscience ask the company to spend the money so I could compare my long runs in 2001 vs. 2006 to determine optimal training pace for a half marathon, or other such trivial analysis.

I convinced myself that this was OK. I further rationalized that losing these files would bring me some needed freedom from my compulsion. Each year, the spreadsheets became more and more complicated. Sometimes I would log a run and be shamed at the slow pace. If I missed a few runs, my projected yearly totals would drop and I would be enslaved by the spreadsheet to make up the miles. My worthiness as a runner was judged by how it looked in the rows and columns of my log file. Finally now, I could just run for the fun and benefits of exercise.

Who did I think I was kidding?

I went along under this self deception for too long. I rarely ran. It took a few months until I reached the final stage of acceptance. I needed to accept the loss of this piece of me. I also needed to accept that my statement ‘What’s the use of running, if you can’t log it on a spreadsheet?’ was more sincere than I thought.

Call me a geek, call me whatever you want, but running is too simple of an activity. I need to complicate it with analysis. I should point out that I can blame heredity somewhat for my addiction. My father records everything. While he keeps low tech logs (a copybook), his logs include the placement every ornament and Christmas ball on the tree.

The creation of BEST Marathon Training is born out of a new spreadsheet. I have turned the corner and accept that my years of data are gone. I can no longer come back from running my 3.2 mile loop in Media and determine that this was the 113th time I ran that course and 18th fastest. But I must move on. Its not like the album Highway 61 Revisited was erased forever, just my files. But I will create more, and most importantly, I will save them to regularly off my hard drive.

Why didn’t I at least print them?