I was introduced to dailymile by my wife Jenny, she had used it for about year to track her running. I started using it and tracking my miles back in December of 2010. At first I was using it to track my mountain biking miles. Then in late September, when I turned 41, I decided that I needed to start running regularly to stay in better shape, and I was using it to log my running miles.

As I worked at Beachbody, I did get into P90X and Insanity fitness programs, but I was having a hard time sticking with it and making the time to do it for an hour, six days a week. I did do them for a few months in the office, it was great working out in the office during office hours, but then I got sucked into big projects and my days were stretching to 12 to 15 hours a day in the office with no room for taking an hour off to workout.

Running and mountain biking seemed to be the best way for me to get in regular exercise.

With running I was able to do first thing in the morning before heading out to work. Since then I’ve been running 1.5 miles, usually five days a week, while mountain biking on the weekends. Tracking all my progress on my dailymile account. It’s a cool site that just serves two core purposes, one: log your miles, two: connect and share with the community in a Facebook like fashion.

Now you might be saying, why not use Team Beachbody? I do use the WOWY Supergym when I’m doing Beachbody fitness programs, however dailymile is about tracking your miles, it can track your workouts too, but it really works when you have miles to log. Plus when you have GPS map tracking it allows you to import that data so you can see your map tracks.

My 2011 Miles

I didn’t really want this to become a promotion about dailymile as more about showing my progress throughout the year. They have a annual summary report that shows you how many miles you did each month and for the entire year along with some more stats like amount of workouts logged and how many pounds were burned off. It was a good year for me as I started to get into a regular exercise routine. Here are my main stats:

• 332 miles, peaked in October with 76 miles
• averaging 6 miles per week
• 93 workouts (combined running and mountain biking)
• 13 pounds burned

Overall I’m really impressed. You don’t think about it when your logging a few miles here and there, but when you see it all added up it’s a big surprise and very rewarding. I had a few gaps in 2011 due to me having a bad mountain bike crash in late May where I fractured three ribs and could not do anything for a few months but give time for my ribs to heal. However since then I’m being more careful and taking care of myself to make sure I can continue to get my exercise in every week.

My 2012 Fitness Goals

Now that I’m into a regular and more focused exercise regimen my goal for 2012 is to break 1,000 miles of combined running, mountain biking, and other activities. I want to get my daily running up to 3 miles a day and burn at least 30 pounds for the year.

This is a commitment I’m making to myself.

In addition to running and mountain biking more, I’m eager to get back into snowboarding. I used to snowboard regularly but then the last several years I never made it up, that is until a few weeks ago. We finally got up and went snowboarding at Mt. High with Ryan and it was fantastic. That one day has put the bug in me to start going regularly, weather permitting. Unfortunately dailymile doesn’t have an option for logging snowboard and ski miles, at least not yet. I’ve sent them a request to add it, so hopefully they’ll make it an option on there. I do GPS tracking on my Nexus One phone while snowboarding so I can log my miles.

Jenny’s dailymile 2011 Summary

Jenny’s 2011 summary is awesome! Her’s shows more stats like how many donuts she burned. Apparently 773 donuts and 40 pounds! I don’t know if it’s because she logged over 1,000 miles at 1,353 or due to her having a Pro account, but it is nice to see the extra data. She ran a lot of marathons throughout the year in addition to her regular running and a growing amount of trail running. She increased her mileage from 2010 by 518 miles, from 835 to 1,353, that’s huge!

They do a great job for tracking your miles, and the annual summary is good to see so you can reflect on your progress, see possible shortcomings, and help determine your future goals. Here is to a great healthy 2012!

My dailymile Training Widget

This will show you my latest miles logged from my dailymile profile.

dailymile Resources

• dailymile.com
• Terry’s dailymile profile and 2011 summary report
• Jenny’s dailymile profile and 2011 summary report
• How to access your dailymile summery report, copy this URL http://www.dailymile.com/people/terry_majamaki/training/2011/summary, but replace terry_majamaki with your dailymile username.

Are you using dailymile to log your exercise mileage? What are your thoughts on it? Please feel free to share your thoughts below and thanks for reading.