I've really like every pair of Brooks Ghost running shoes that I've owned. My first pair of running shoes were Brooks Ghosts. As I started to do more winter running, my wife treated me to a pair of Gore-Tex Ghosts for my birthday. 

This year was my first attempt at the Pengelly Double Dip. I ran in the Pengelly Single Dip last year and it was my first race that had some dirt trail in the race. I committed to running in the Double Dip early this year and spent my spring trail running in an attempt to prepare for this race.

I really wanted to run in the Sweathouse Half Marathon last year, but a bicycle tour in the San Juan Islands happened to overlap during the same time period and the trip to the San Juan Islands won out. The opportunity returned this year and I was able to make it happen. 

I went into this years Missoula Half Marathon with higher expectations and less nerves, as last year was my first time running the Missoula Half Marathon, as well as my frist time running an official half marathon race. I ran the Pittsburgh Half Marathon about two months before and was happy with my continued improvement.  I was hoping to see the same type of improvement in Missoula after putting in over 100 training miles in June leading up to the Missoula race. 

I've been meaning to write down some thoughts about my training this year, but up to this point I've only managed to do the running not the writing. I'm now into my second season of consistent running and am really excited about both of the half marathons that I already have on my schedule. Last season, I followed a training plan leading up to my first ever half marathon and I feel it went really well. I felt good about my race and enjoyed the entire process from the start of training to crossing the finish line.

As a cyclist, runner, and a person into technology, it is difficult not to be attracted to Strava. With Strava's open API, I immediately wanted to access my data and find ways to work with it. I started with putting together a simple API wrapper in Coldfusion and am now working it into a Mura CMS plugin for storing and displaying data on my own site. 

I've been wanting to work with the Strava API to gain access to my running and cycling data that I store on the service. I did a quick search for a Coldfusion based api wrapper, but was unable to find anything. So, I started to put together my own Strava V3 API wrapper written in Coldfusion.

Kim and I both decided to do the New Year's Eve 2 mile Prediction run to close out the running year. I predicted a 2 mile time of 15:25 and ended up running a flat 15:00. I always seem to push a little harder when around others and it is interesting to run without the Garmin watch which provides instant feedback at all times.