My "Year In Sport"

2023-01-31

This year, Strava has paywalled the yearly recap "Year in Sport" recap they send their users. This is a real bummer because

  1. Last years recap inspired me to try and exercise every day in 2022 and

  2. I don't want to pay for Strava Premium.

However, Strava has an easy to use API, so a few calls to /activities/ later...

(Distances are in miles, elevation gain is in feet)

Run
	Count: 54
	Time: 2 days, 2:23:10
	Distance: 289
	Elevation: 23035
Yoga
	Count: 76
	Time: 1 day, 14:37:01
	Distance: 0
	Elevation: 0
Ride
	Count: 201
	Time: 6 days, 0:24:24
	Distance: 1525
	Elevation: 81117
EBikeRide
	Count: 6
	Time: 2:46:09
	Distance: 35
	Elevation: 1178
WeightTraining
	Count: 30
	Time: 15:17:02
	Distance: 0
	Elevation: 0
Workout
	Count: 3
	Time: 1:50:00
	Distance: 0
	Elevation: 0
Hike
	Count: 2
	Time: 2:06:22
	Distance: 5
	Elevation: 531
AlpineSki
	Count: 5
	Time: 10:44:36
	Distance: 73
	Elevation: 34199
Totals
	Count: 377
	Time: 11 days, 2:08:44
	Distance: 1929
	Elevation: 140062
Total days with at least one exercise: 223
Mean exercise per day exercised: 1.6

Okay, so not quite as visually stimulating as the Strava experience but it's interesting to see the numbers.

For fun, I tried to graph these into something insightful. How about a joy plot?

An attempted "joy plot", which shows each exerciseas a relative line graph overlapping with one another

That wasn't super useful. Okay, let's try again - maybe some calendars? Let's graph activities graded by the elapsed_time of the activity.

A calendar of the year with each day represented by a cell. The cell is darker or lighter depending on the elapsed time exercising.

Okay, I can work with this. Let's split things out by activity type and see if there's anything interesting under there.

Running

A calendar of the year with each day represented by a cell. The cell is darker or lighter depending on the elapsed running time.

I ran the Pittsburgh Marathon in May. Those four dark Sundays were the sixteen-to-twenty mile long runs for my training and the big day itself. I made a little video during the run:

After clinching my "26.2" bumper sticker, I was pretty burned out on running - it looks like I didn't run at all from May to September. Let's remove the top 10% of runs and regraph:

A calendar of the year with each day represented by a cell. The cell is darker or lighter depending on the elapsed running time. Only runs less than 90% of the longest run in the year are present.

There we go; still a big gap present, but not quite as bad. You can see where I started running regularly with the 3ROC trail running group. Turns out trail running is really fun!

I also ran my first Great Race and completed my first Fineview Step Challenge. The Step Challenge is wild - five miles of running up 1,000+ feet of Pittsburgh's finest public stairs, including this 17-story monster.

A photo of Rising Main I found on Google
Source

All that said, I didn't even crack 300 miles of running this year, less than a mile a day.

Hoping for bigger and better next year!

Cycling

A calendar of the year with each day represented by a cell. The cell is darker or lighter depending on the elapsed biking time.

Similarly to running, I had a big cycling event that I trained hard for and then kind of fell off. In this case the event was the Dirty Dozen, a tour of thirteen of Pittsburgh's steepest hills.

All-in, I ended up doing total of 7800 ft of climbing over 75 miles in seven and a half hours. Because I made it up each without stopping (including a redo), once again I was an official finisher.

What do you get for all this? A picnic-games style ribbon.

A green ribbon you might see given away at a fair. It reads "DIRTY DOZEN 2022 - OFFICIAL FINISHER"

I love this event. Some day I'll write a post about it.

I also rode a 100-miler with a good friend in September. We did the entire Montour Trail, including the Airport spur, plus a segment of the Panhandle Trail. It was a relaxing and fun (if gritty) ride.

A photo of me and my friend at the fountain in Point State Park.

And I took my family down the GAP trail in late October. We planned it for three days and went the "wrong way" from Cumberland to Pittsburgh. The idea was to front-load the climbing and then coast from the Eastern Continental Divide. In practice, this was a big ask on day one. Still, a great trip!

A photo of me with my brother and dad at the "end" of the GAP in Cumberland, MD

I'm happy to say I got a lot of commuting done via bike, despite a doubling in distance from the new house. You can see it more clearly if I remove the top 10% again; pretty much all of this is my ~12 miles to and from the office:

A calendar of the year with each day represented by a cell. The cell is darker or lighter depending on the elapsed running time. Only runs less than 90% of the longest ride in the year are present.

I've been toying with getting an e-bike to keep my two-wheeled commute short and shower-free. The Liberty Ave climb guarantees I'm sweating, so my time from door-to-desk tripled to 45 minutes to an hour. That's a lot of time to spend commuting, but it's still faster than taking the bus and better than driving the car. We'll see if I can swallow my pride and electrify my ride this year.

Yoga

A calendar of the year with each day represented by a cell. The cell is darker or lighter depending on the elapsed running time.

Did another "30 days of yoga with Adriene" to kick off the year. I'm an uncomplicated practitioner. Yoga helps take the edge off sore muscles and sour moods.

Weight lifting

A calendar of the year with each day represented by a cell. The cell is darker or lighter depending on the elapsed running time.

I got back on my Stronglifts 5x5 grind. I really love that program; it's uncomplicated and effective.

I broke the 300lbs mark on my deadlift and was 5lbs shy of a two-plate squat. Unfortunately, life pulled me away and training for the DD was getting demanding. Hoping to log more time here next year.

Honorable Mentions: Skiing and Hiking

I did scarcely any hiking this year, which was a big downgrade. I love spending time in nature and overnight backpacking; I hope to squeak a trip or two in this year.

I also only skied a handful of times, which is a little less surprising but still sad. On the bright side, when we got that huge snowstorm in January I took the opportunity to go skiing off the Duquesne Incline. I used iMovie's trailer maker to cut this together:

What else? A pie chart? Why not. New year, new me.

A horrible pie chart of my exercises by type

Oh yeah, take it in. The most useless visualization, alive and well.

All in all, a red letter year.

My gratitude to everyone there to share in the suffering, and thanks to those who humble and inspire me to go harder. I'll see you out there!