January Goal Update

I set myself a few goals for 2013. Nothing too crazy as I'm not one for New Year's resolutions but a few things that I thought would be fun (or a good idea) to work toward. I also thought it might be a good idea to actually report on them. That always helps keep me accountable.

I had a few athletic goals. My first goal was to run 1000 kilometres by the end of the year. Last year I ran 974.6km and, if I had realized I'd get that close to a four digit number, I would have added a few kilometres here and there.

I'm not sure why 1000 is that much more impressive than 975 but it is.

Well, January is over and I've logged 87km.

I've run three long runs: 13km, 15km and 16km. They were supposed to be 12km, 14km and 16km but it's so hard to find a perfect route at the perfect distance and I hate to run less than I'm supposed to. So there you have it.

I've done three hill sessions. All in the early-morning dark and all in the freezing cold. Each hill session was between 4-5km long depending on how many times I ran up. The number of times I ran up the hill depended entirely on what time I had to get to work that morning as every hill climb gets a little longer and the sprint up and easy run down take longer and longer.

I've had five Tuesday morning runs that are typically between 5km and 7km. That distance doesn't change during easy weeks. Only the long runs and the hill sessions change during an easy week.

If I were to run exactly 87km every month, I'd run 1044km in a year.

That, of course, is not going to happen. Some months will be over 100km. Others will be more like 60km.

I'll most likely run close to 100km in February as I'll be in the highest part of my half marathon training and will be running 18km, 20km and 22km long runs before I start to taper. That's an extra 16km just in long runs. The hills and Tuesday morning runs won't change much, if at all, in terms of distance so I'll probably have a nice high number at the end of this month.

My other running goals were to run the Tel Aviv half marathon on March 15th. I've signed up and am working my way through my training plan. So far, so good.

I also wanted to stay injury-free in 2013. So far everything feels fine. I have my monthly massage this afternoon and am happy to report that I'm going for maintenance rather than to fix a problem.

Finally, I want to complete three triathlons, one of them being an Olympic distance. I have chosen the three I'm going to do and have been working hard in the pool to hone my swimming skills. My next step is to make time to get my bike on the trainer so that I'm not starting from scratch in April once we hit the streets again.

As for my non-running goal of paying down debt - there's good news and bad news. My overall debt is down (yay!) but my credit card debit hardly budged. I paid down a fair amount but also racked up a fair amount with booking my flight to Israel, registering for the Tel Aviv half and paying for a few other things I just couldn't pay in cash. So I'm inching my way along but not at the rate I had planned for the month of January.

February will be tight as I try to save a bit for Israel while not adding an extra penny on the credit card. I won't make much headway but I refuse to add to my debt so February's goal is to simply maintain. March means income tax returns which will more than make up for the lack of headway in February.

And that, folks, is the January goal report.