Goals for the New Year

Hard to believe that the end of the year is already here. It has been a really good one overall. My average weekly mileage is finally approaching a respectable level, I ran a few decent marathons, and I had a bunch of fun running relays and shorter races.

Of course, there is always room for improvement. This week, I went back to the goals I had outlined for myself at the beginning of 2009 and found that I only hit 2 of the 4:

• Run 1,500 total miles. As of today, I’m at 2,035. So, unless I figure out a way to run negative miles, I’m good on that one.
• Run at least 100 miles every month. Thanks to the knee injury over the summer, I missed this one. June was only 82 miles, and July was only 99.
• Run a mile in under five minutes. Nope. I ran a 5:22, 5:21, and 5:14. Funny, I thought this would be the easiest of the four.
• Run a sub-3:10 marathon and qualify for Boston. Yep. Did that 3 times, actually.

Lately, I’ve been putting a lot of thought into what I want my running goals for 2010 to be. I want them to be ambitious enough that they’ll be something significant to work towards, yet I want them to all be reasonable so that I can finish up better than 50% this year. (By better than 50%, I mean 100%.) After all, what’s the point of making goals if you don’t hit them? Here’s the final list:

• Run 3,000 total miles. This breaks out to 57.7 miles a week, which is actually a little lighter than what I plan on doing, but 3,500 seems like a stretch. Maybe that’ll be a goal for 2011.
• Run at least 200 miles every month. This is here to focus on consistency. Even in the lulls between races this coming year, I want to make sure that I’m getting in at least 50 miles a week. Also, this means being smart (and lucky) and not getting injured.
• Run a mile in under five minutes. Ewen made a good point that breaking 5 won’t always be possible. Even though it’s not directly related to my ambitions of running longer distances, it’s something that I really want to tackle. Crap, I suppose that means I have to start doing some speedwork.
• Run a sub-1:25 half marathon. I seem to have hit a wall in the half marathon. I dropped under 1:28 in January at Manhattan, but haven’t been able to go sub-1:27 despite running 5 halves this year. Here’s hoping that this year’s Manhattan can be as big of a breakthrough as last year’s was.
• Run another sub-3 hour marathon. There are a couple marathons on my list that are somewhat isolated from the others and that I’d like to run fast. If I happen to drop under 2:55, that would be super cool, but it’s not a priority for the year.
• Finish ten or more 26+ mile races. There’s eleven on my calendar now. So, basically, this is just to finish those.
• Run a sub-6:30:00 50 miler. That’s an 7:48/mile pace which seems tough, but achievable. Really, I have no idea, though, how my body is going to respond to going longer than 26.2. It will be interesting to find out.

Well, that’s the list. Hopefully I’ll be writing about how I went 7 for 7 a year from now. And, if I don’t, feel free to call me a jackass. After all, that’s the point of me making these goals public. A little extra accountability…