Wednesday, December 31, 2008

New Year's ... Resolutions?

"A New Year's resolution is something that goes in one year and out the other." -Unknown

I'm not big on resolutions. I'm not trying to say that I'm perfect and don't need to better myself at all, but I think you don't need to wait til the new year to make these changes. And like my quote suggests, these resolutions are usually not permanent.
So, I am not going to talk about my resolutions for the new year in this post... I will talk about my goals that I will achieve next year and look back on what I did this past year. For the most part, these goals are running related.
Last year was the first year that I was very diligent in keeping a running log. I record the distance, time, and pace for each of my runs. It is interesting to look back and see how much my weekly mileage totals have changed from January to now. I am running a lot more. I think it makes a difference when you can actually see what you've done (or haven't done). I have run a total of 1183.07 miles this year and it will probably end up being 1190.07 after I run my 7 miler in an hour or two. That is a total of 7 days, 5 hrs and 11 minutes!
I ran 12 road races and set 10 PRs. Of course, this is the first time that I've been serious about racing and keeping track of my times, so I will indefinitely set some records. This year is acting as my baseline. I ran one full marathon and my first half. I am currently training for my third marathon that I will run in March.
I started a blog and joined a running club. Because of this club I have made a lot of new friends and have a group that I run with on Saturday mornings. I also found out that my hair stylist does Dean Karnazes' wife's mom's hair! Isn't that cool!
I also started this blog. I haven't been as good at keeping it updated as I had hoped. This brings me to goals that I have for next year.
I want to run at least 2000 miles and at least 1 mile/day. I want to complete two marathons (the small one in March and then the Dallas White Rock marathon in December. I also want to beat 4 hours and possibly run a BQ. I want to update this blog on a more regular basis, but that might mean just doing race reports once a month during the school year. During the summer I might have more time to write about thoughts & what's going on in my life.
So, I guess that's it. I know my goals sound like resolutions, but I just don't like the connotation of that word. Usually resolutions have to do with diets and losing weight. They typically don't work out for people and are forgotten by January 14th. So, with that thought in mind, I resolve to gain 20 lbs and start eating more junk food!