Setting goals is not practical if you don’t periodically review your progress and whether or not they are still appropriate.  I just gave this speech to a customer yesterday and realized that it applies to me as well.  So, one month in to the year, I’ve decided that it’s as good a time as any to examine my 2011 goals.

  1. Mileage – Consistency is moot thus far, as it’s month one, but I’m at 109.25 running miles for the month thus far, which isn’t too far off of my 104.131456 targeted average for the 2011 kilometer challenge.  The real test will be to keep it steady through February, which is wrought with business and vacation travel1.
  2. Race Weight – There’s two important rules of losing weight that many people (myself included) often disregard.  One is to not weigh yourself daily.  This is mostly psychological, because you will fluctuate upwards some days, and it’s really hard, no matter how analytical you think you’re being, not to overreact and take poor “corrective” actions when none are needed.  The second is to look only at weight.  There’s more to your weight and well being than a number on a scale, and though few of us have a way to regularly measure our BMI, we can all jot down a few notes on how large we feel from weigh in to weigh in.
    I’ve been doing this weekly, on Friday mornings, I’ve got data for four weeks.  Whee!  I haven’t figured out a good way to chart “the feel” aspect of things, but so far, so good.  With the exception of week 2 2, things are moving in the right direction.  I still feel “big,” but today was the first time I’m feeling a difference in the direction of “good.”  There’s still an inch or two to pinch, but I feel much less bloated and heavy during runs than I did in week 1.
  3. Cross Training – The Active.com cross training plan turned out to be junk.  (And, from the scuttlebutt on twitter, that’s pretty much par for the course when it comes to Active.com.)  Most of the cross training plan (designed for runners) was more cardio.  I kept it up for the first few weeks, but this week ditched it and am trying to switch to more weight workouts, using the plan only as a guide to remind me to do something other than run.  So far, I’ve fallen short of the three per week goal, but am consistently hitting at least two per week.
    I’ve also started doing yoga daily with my wife, with the tagline “Every Day; No Excuses.”  There’s really no reason not to be able to take at least 15 minutes to step through a routine.  So far, so good; day 7 of 7.  I’m not counting these towards my goal of three non-run workouts per week, but some of them are pretty good core workouts so it certainly helps.  Plus, they’re making it easier to get in to the right mindset.
  4. Water – Hitting my 100 ounces per day goal hasn’t been an issue (save for weekend events that don’t let you bring your own water in – I hate that!) but spreading it out evenly across the day has been.  On a good day, I’m easily breaking 200 ounces3, but other days I’m front loading the day with too much tea and not touching the water until the afternoon, which isn’t good.
  5. Workouts, not just runs – I’d like to blame Active.com for this again, but I’m falling short by following their plan.  Still all on me, though, right?  Gotta take responsibility for my decision to follow a stupid plan.  I did intervals (off plan) in week 2 and a (weak) time trial (per plan) in week 4.  I need to pick this one up if I’m going to hit my race goals for the year, even if it’s a simple as a one mile sprint on a Friday.
  6. 19:00 5k – No attempts on this yet.  Nothing scheduled for certain, either.  There’s a race in Ventura tomorrow that we might do, and one that might work out during my upcoming trip to San Francisco, but neither is likely a certified course and I’m probably not tuned up to race condition yet.  This goal is sort of on hold until the spring, when February travel has slowed and maybe I’m in a community that’s more in to 5ks than trail runs.
  7. 1:32 half marathon – Again, not there yet.  I only did one race – XTerra Boney Mountain – in January, and though it was almost a half marathon, it wasn’t actually a half marathon.  And it was a trail race.  A really tough trail race that I neither prepared for nor paced myself on.  Fun?  Oh hell  yeah.  But not only was it not a PR, I think it was my worst ever.  If the life scheduling gods smile upon me, I’ll see how I feel at the Rose Bowl Half Marathon on Super Bowl Sunday and/or the Great Race of Agoura, which looks like an awesome event with both a road and trail half, a 10k, a 5k, and a kids’ mile!  It’s probably too soon to expect to hit this goal, but I need to practice pacing as well as improving my speed and a race is the best place to do that.

So that’s where I’m at.  Month one is just about in the bag and I’m not too disappointed with my efforts.  Mostly I need to improve the cross training and specific training runs.  And that water thing.  I still think by goals are what I want to work towards; nothing to change yet.

How about you?  Did you take on any goals for 2011?  How’s the progress going?

Show 3 footnotes

  1. Oakland, Ottawa, San Francisco, Maui, wheeee!
  2. Which I can pretty well attribute to polishing off the egg nog and leftover Thai the night before…
  3. When I learned that my water bottle was 20 ounces, suddenly five bottles seemed insufficient to quench my thirst!
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