A look to the year ahead

Contrary to most competitive runners, my number one goal is not to set a PR or break some time goal in a particular distance.  My main goal for this year is to adopt a healthier approach to running and fitness in general.  For the past decade, I have been singularly focused on one thing: putting one foot in front of the other as fast as I can over a set distance.  The training necessary to do this is arduous, to say the least, and completely one-dimensional.  I can run a pretty quick marathon, but don’t ask me to help you move, because I can barely lift half my body weight.  I plan on incorporating a lot of body-weight and free-weight exercises into my training routine in order to gain some strength.

Yup, I’ll probably look like this

Also, I plan on adopting a more casual approach to training.  Right now, I am a data and information geek, and need numbers for everything.  I need to log all of my miles so I know how many miles per week I am running.  I record the paces for every run, even recovery jogs.  I wear a GPS all the time, so that I can upload the data to Strava and compete with other runners virtually.  My training plan is an esoteric mix of letters of numbers that make complete sense to me and a few others, e.g. 6-8x 1000 (78), 2:00.  I live and breathe by these plans and logs, and often plan my schedules around my run for the day.  I can’t tell you how many times I have turned down an invitation on a Friday or Saturday night because I had a workout or a race the next morning.  In 2014, this will change.  I’m still going to train hard, but I’m not going to be as obsessive-compulsive about it.  There are bigger and better things to spend my energy on.

Of course, I don’t plan on changing my philosophy until I break 16 minutes in the 5K, which I hope will occur sooner rather than later this year.  Once that is accomplished, though, I will try to be a little more well-rounded socially and fitness-wise.

The other big goal for this year is to take a page from my Eric Eagan’s book and try to minimize this year.  A few months ago, I went through all of my clothes and ended up donating at least 50% of them, as I just didn’t need that much “stuff.”  Ashlie has gotten into the spirit as well, and went through all of her clothes last night to donate much of it.  We will be going through every room in the house, as well as the garage and basement, and selling or donating anything that we don’t absolutely need and/or haven’t used in the past year.  We also want to reduce our debt, as we both have tons of student loans, car payments, and a mortgage.  In the past, we have been lucky enough to be able to take some great vacations (honeymooning in Italy, an all-inclusive resort in the Dominican Republic, a cruise to Central America), but now it’s time to take some of our money and put it towards reducing our debt.

Stay tuned for future updates!