Running Review 2022

At the start of 2021, I did a round up of 2020 and included some running stats. In 2022, I wrote a whole post about it because my running had got a bit more serious I suppose. However, 2022 did not go to planning on the exercise front.

Total Stats Comparison

	2021	2022
Active Days	278	165
Total Time	239 hours	113 hours
Total Distance	1853 km	1039 km
Total Elevation	20,624 m	10804 m
Longest Activity	25 km on bikes, new year’s eve	2h45 canoeing, my birthday

PBs

I achieved PBs for all my distances in 2021:

• 1 km: 4min12
• 1 mile: 7min26
• 5 km: 24min00
• 10km: 55min26
• HM: 2h11min00

The only PB I achieved in 2022 was my half-marathon on baby boy3’s birthday at the end of January (2h05m51s).

RED January

I kicked off 2022 with a month long “run every day” session.

You can read a full review here. I covered almost 225km, almost twice as much as 2021.

As far as I was concerned it was an excellent start to the year, I was set to build on my 2021 fitness and have an amazing 2022.

And then it all went wrong….

At the start of February himself started sneezing. He took the dreaded COVID test and it had 2 lines. After almost two years of avoiding the inevitable it finally caught up with us. At that time, we could still get as many tests as we needed from school and pharmacies and the boys and I were required to test daily before going to school or just out. Three days into himself feeling horrid, I got all congested. Ah the dread, I was sure I’d test positive in the next day or two. But I didn’t. Nor did the boys. We all just had a really nasty cold at the same time as himself had COVID. Sounds a bit of a coincidence right? Yeah, we couldn’t believe it either and one false negative would have been not unreasonable. But we were testing daily, 18 false negatives is even less believable than such a coincidence. Remember himself and I had both had all our vaccines, so he was sharing it less effectively than he would have unvaccinated.

The cold I had was a really nasty one though. I was in bed for a couple of days and totally out of action for running for three weeks. When I finally went back, it was hard, really hard. After 23 hours of running in January, I did 3 hours in February. March was better, but all short runs. April and May were better, peaking at a 15km run at the end of May.

Then we went to Italy for a week. It was an awesome holiday and I ran 3 or 4 times, even though it was really quite hot. Then, coming through the airport on the way home, it was my turn to get COVID. Again no one else in the house caught it, but I was positive for 12 days. Then, I forced myself to be sensible and kept away from running for several more weeks. When I got back to it in July, I found that I couldn’t breathe. COVID had just been a running nose, aches, temperature and generally feeling quite unpleasant, but I hadn’t had a cough. Nevertheless the virus had evidently damaged my lungs in some way. After a couple of weeks of struggling, I dug out an old peak flow meter. I’m 5’4″ and about 52kg, theoretically my peak flow should be about 425 L/min. However, I know from previous recoveries from bronchitis that my normal reading is 625 L/min. After a short run, I measured my peak flow…. 350 L/min. Bad, very bad. No wonder I was feeling so awful. I called my GP surgery and had a phone appointment with the asthma nurse. She was excellent, listened to my history and my previous measurements, she understood that 350 compared to 425 isn’t terrible but compared to 625 it’s really bad. She said I had exercise induced asthma and prescribed salamol to take 15-20mins before running.

Oh my goodness! It was amazing, an instant prevention of the pain and tightness I’d been feeling and the recovery of my breathe was back to normal. Over the following months, if I forgot my inhaler then I surely knew about it within the first mile of a run.

Finally, in November I forgot my inhaler and managed 3.5km no trouble. I had hope! The after effects of COVID wouldn’t last forever, I started to feel that I would get back to where I’d been in January. At the start of December I really extended my distances, getting back out to 18km even on the frostiest day ever in -6C temperatures.

Fabulous right?

Nope.

Right after that lovely long run, small boy got sick, flu we think. He had an awful temperature and aches and pains, congestion and tiredness. In his generosity, he shared it with me. I felt dreadful, then the congestion got into my chest and I started coughing and coughing, proper barking. I lost another three weeks before finally venturing back out just before new year.

I’m doing RED January again but taking it super easy as I don’t want to ruin my recovery. Let’s hope 2023 is less scattered with bugs and breaks than 2022 was.

How was yours?

So that was my 2022 in running. How was your year in sport or exercise?