December: Victory

   Even if number don't lie, common decency would let us embellish a little. This is the trouble with training logs. As you pore over the numbers you've recorded during the past year, notice how your eye lingers on the weeks, sometimes the months in which you failed to meet your goals. Athletes tend to stare at defeat as through a cruel but hopeful window. Yet the year's end provides a splendid opportunity to toss out your prejudices about defeat and victory.

   We all know that consistent training, for example, delivers the best results. But it doesn't deliver consistent results. Olympians and world-class marathoners will tell you as much. Any good training program should proceed with the understanding that you can't - and shouldn't - work at 100 percent around the calendar. Certainly you want to understand why dedication and desire wane, especially for extended periods. But instead of resolving to work through these dips with greater determination, resolve to reexamine your goals. Training reveals palpable truths about who you are; goals are abstractions. Let your goals realign with your truths, not the other way around.

   While you're at it, make a promise to reinvest fun into your workouts and be willing to apply the imagination that makes this happen. Trail running, cross training, and partners (including the furry types that run on four feet) can jolt new life into a training program. So can a stopwatch or a racing registration form. Running might be the last place in our lives in which we get to invent the rules - all of them. Fun is a way of taking charge of your program.

   Likewise, be fair in levying blame. It's astounding how many runners upbraid themselves for getting the flu or for pulling a hamstring. All runners eventually get sidelined. Work and family will always make demands on your training time, and the balancing act that modern life requires is rarely neat or comfortable. Remind yourself that running is less a claim on your time than a way of achieving better balance in the rest of your life. But also be aware that when the furnace breaks, the dog swallows a golf ball, or a deadline looms, your workout is a practical sacrifice, no blame necessary.

   Meanwhile, are you learning the right lessons from a training slump? The things that dump you into a slump matter less than the things that bring you out. Look for patterns. Failed romances, career changes, or financial windfalls and setbacks can send you in either direction. These tell you very little. Far more important are the subtle signs you get from daily workouts. Boredom and joy are great signposts because every workout contains a little of both. Pay attention to how they change over time.

   Finally, take a hard look at the things a training log can't tell you. The benefits to your long-term health, your ability to manage stress, the time you get to spend alone with yourself and the open road - these are the things that keep a running program alive. They don't reveal themselves in numbers.