Non-periodic Self Locomotion Update

I can't begin to call this "monthly" these days.  But here's an update:

Miles complete as of 11/4/12: 883.25
Progress vs target: +38.99 miles

The chart below shows how we've done over the whole year.  Up is bad, down is good.  August we did well (96.3 miles) followed by a weak September (74.2 miles).  We gave up a lot of our gains and peaked at just 15 miles ahead of pace near the end of the month.  With fall and then winter still ahead of us, I was a bit worried about our prospects of churning out high mileage months as the weather worsened.  The solution?  Call in Grammie and Opa!  Shannon's parents came for a week or so at the beginning of October, and we turned into self locomoting fiends!  We logged nearly 28 miles in a 5 day stretch.  G&O like walking, so they went out nearly every day with Shannon and the girls (and the girls were much more excited to go on walks if G&O were going too!).  Then in the evening or the weekend, it was a lot easier for me to get out and go running knowing that G&O could play with the girls while Shannon was making dinner or something like that.  So, basically, the trick to having more time to exercise is to have two people at your house full time to take care of your kids!  Who knew?!?!  October ended with 102.1 miles, our second highest month of the year.  (And it was nice to break 100 after June, July and August all ended between 95 and 100.)

As a result, we're feeling much more optimistic about reaching 1,000 miles for the year than we did a month ago.  We need 2.05 miles per day in order to get there.  With only 116.75 miles remaining, I figure we're a virtual lock to get within 30 or 40 miles of our goal, and if we get that close, we won't miss it, because in the closing weeks of the year, we'd start doing crazy death marches through the snow rather then end up at 984 miles for the year or something like that.

It's also interesting to note that the girls are at a combined 68 miles right now.  The likelihood of us topping 1,068 is very low, which means that you could argue that it will be the girls that put us "over the top".  It's fun to see that, because at the beginning of the year we talked about this being a family goal.  If I had gone out and run 1,000 miles by myself this year, that would have been pretty awesome and all, but it wouldn't make this much of a family accomplishment.

And finally, our goal of 1,000 continues to look like a very good goal, despite the fact that we just sorta picked a nice round number.  Without the goal, I don't think we'd have nearly as many miles logged this year.  (Well, we wouldn't have created a log at all, but you know what I mean.)  It's probably added two or three hundred miles to our total.  The fact that we're just barely meeting it is interesting.  Are we capable of more, if we had a tougher goal?  What number do we pick for next year?  (The girls are less and less excited to take walks with each passing month.)