Goals Galore

I've been going back and forth about my running goals for this year. I am not sure if I can be realistic right now in terms of specific goals. I know that I will run in two races in 2010, and I have a general idea of what other sorts of races I'll want to participate in. But for me to write down and commit myself to filling out my race calendar right now would be irrational.

Still, I do want to have goals and I will put them down right now to give myself some things to shoot for next year.

* Run my first marathon. This is a gimmie, right? Well, to put it on here, it is. I've already registered and fully intend on participating in it. The run itself is no gimmie, though. Still, this is a great goal for me nonetheless.

* Run a Mud Run. The June 5 Mud Run is the second race that is on my calendar as a for sure. As far as the time goes... my goal will be to set a new Mud Run PR and to get as close to one hour as possible, and to beat my trash-talking brother Danny in the process.

* Set a new Half Marathon PR. I should probably have set a goal to run a sub-2 hour Half Marathon but I still don't know if that's possible for me. But I do know that I can and will shatter my finish time of 2:14:50 from the Run Through Redlands whenever I run my next Half. I think it very well could be the 2010 Run Through Redlands. If so, the hills will be challenging but hopefully the weather complies and it won't be so hot that day.

* Run a 5K. I want to run another 5K. I've run one 5K, back in June 2008. It was my first-ever race and I finished with a time of 25:05. I'm fairly confident that I could beat that time now, but I haven't attempted to run a 5K since as I've moved on to running longer races. I think the best thing for me would be to just come across a 5K, register and run it. I don't want to plan it too far in advance as I think it could just fall into my lap.

* Keep a running journal. I know, this blog kind of serves as a running journal in the sense that I track my training on here, set goals, write race recaps and all that good stuff, but I don't log every run on here. I'm sure few want to read about every little 5-miler I crank out, such as Wednesday's uneventful five-mile treadmill romp. Well, it was eventful in the sense that it was my last run of '09, but aside from that it will blend into the other treadmill-runs-in-the-garage I've ran. And that's the thing. I don't want those runs to vanish. I want to have something tangible to point to, to say "this is what I did on such-and-such day." I already have the journal itself, so we'll see how this one works out.

* Run a lot of miles. This one's lame, I know, but I'll explain. Lately all over the runners' part of the blogosphere, I've seen bloggers writing about how many miles they've ran, and the magic number for many seems to be 1,000 miles (except for Katie who is going to shoot for 2,010 miles in 2010! awesome!). Naturally this has led me to wonder how many miles I ran in '09 and how many I can realistically run in 2010. I don't know if I can run 1,000 because it seems like a lot (duh). It's an average of about 20 miles a week. I'm doing more than 20 miles a week now, and if things go well in January I will run at least 110 miles (counting the scheduled long runs and at least two five-milers midweek). Add in the marathon distance plus the few scheduled runs after Surf City, and we're getting past the 150-mile mark. But it's the post-marathon running I'm unsure of, whether or not I'll have a spring race to train for. So, my sort-of goal is to run 1,000 miles, but my official goal I suppose will be to get to as close as 1,000 miles ran as possible.

* Run more days than I don't. This one seems like an easy one. And it's the one I hope I can really reach. Right now I probably run three days a week. I'd love to run at least four days a week, but my schedule sometimes doesn't allow for that. But I'm going to strive to meet this one.

I suppose that's about it for my running goals for twenty-ten. Hopefully for twenty-eleven I'll have even greater goals (set a Marathon PR! run a second sub-two hour Half!) after what could be my best running year ever.