The most surprising statistic from my biggest week in running

Biggest because it was literally the biggest so far. In the third week of January, Monday to Sunday, I’ve run close to 71.5 miles. That’s over 10 miles a day but I don’t like this extrapolation. I don’t think in terms of running miles per day. During my week I have a variety of runs. My long run on Sunday was twenty miles so I’d run fewer than ten miles on some days. But the resulting weekly mileage is my highest so far. I’m not preparing for a race, but have been ramping up my mileage as I look to take my running to new levels.

Strava is a household name for many runners and athletes, but somehow I’d never used it. I finally signed up a few days ago and it synced my workouts from Garmin.

I want to talk about this snapshot

My Garmin doesn’t show how much time I’ve spent running. Maybe it does but it’s not easily discoverable.

So I spent 8 hours 43 minutes running in my biggest week of running. I can imagine — I’m sure actually — that my seventy-one miles per week seem crazy high for 99.99 percent of people, including amateur runners.

But nine hours per week?

Maybe I’m underestimating the magnitude of this effort, but it seems mediocre — nine hours a week exercising.