My wife asked me the other day whether I have any New Year's resolutions. My immediate reply was that I don't. I am pretty goal oriented, and I don't generally feel like I need the occasion of a new year to set new goals. As I thought about it however, the new year is a good time to take stock of how things went last year, and how I hope they will in the coming year.
2006 was a really good year. I ran well all year without injury problems. I got do to a lot of fun races from the early spring through the summer all the way to the late fall. I got on the track for workouts for the first time in a few years and discovered that my speed, which I was starting to think was gone forever, even magically appeared a couple times. Don't get me wrong, I'm still feeling my age. But it's fun to run well.
The year was capped off by the Chicago marathon, which, while not my p.r. did allow me to qualify for Boston for the first time. I went into that race determined and confident I could run well, but also mindful of that fact that the experience of training for the race and running it would be a success even if I failed to reach my time goal. At least that's what I've told myself in previous marathons when I fell just short. In any case, I did hit my goal time by the whopping margin of ten seconds. But I have to admit, it felt a whole lot better to finish there than ten seconds later. Even though I told myself otherwise, those ten seconds of a three hour plus run helped define my year as a success.
So where was I? Oh yeah, resolutions. We were talking about New Years resolutions today at channel 7. One of my colleagues did a story about how most people are resolving to lose weight and exercise more. All the usual stuff. She was offering advice about how people can stick to their resolutions. I generally ignore that kind of stuff. Runners generally don't need to make those types of resolutions of course. But we can resolve to improve in any number of different areas, from diet, to core strength, to increased mileage or speed work. And we can always resolve to improve our times in various distances.
The new year doesn't necessarily have to be the time to make those goals, but since everyone else seems to be doing it, hey, why not? Besides, wouldn't you be the coolese one at the office when you disclose that your resolution is to break 40 minutes in a 10k. Or 45 minutes? Or 50? Whatever.
So my resolution, after much thought, is to try to continue my injury-free streak. I have two marathons in my sights this year: Boston and New York. I hope to run well enough to enjoy both of them. To do that, I'm going to have to resist the urge to slack off from the core training and make sure to lay off some of the pizza and beer!
Hey, one final thought. If you haven't read the current issue of Runner's World, you should check it out. Kristin Armstrong's story about her ex-husband's New York marathon experience is pretty interesting. There are also some good core strength exercise diagrams in that I found pretty good. It seems like they have a renewed focus on running and providing more editorial content of interest to serious runners. I, for one, approve.
By the way, I realize I haven't haed an entry in a while to this space. That's because I was on vacation. Next time I'll tell you all about it... I promise not to bore you to death...
See you on the roads.
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