Sunday, April 27, 2014

Checking in on my 2014 running goals

I haven't really made New Year's Resolutions in years, but I do like setting goals for the upcoming year. I suppose there might not be much difference, although resolutions generally seem like they're about addressing things you don't like about yourself, whereas goals are about striving to accomplish more.
Anyway, my running goals are pretty straightforward:

1 mile: under 5:40 (2013: 5:49)
5K: under 19:50 (2013: 20:25)
10K: under 43 (2013: 44:38)
half marathon: under 1:35:00 (2013: 1:39:40)
total mileage: >1700 (2013: 1769)
finish in top 10% of every race (2013: 10/11)

With almost a third of the year gone by, I'm not actually sure how feasible most of these remain. Right at the beginning of the year, I injured both Achilles tendons during a double-race (1 mile run at 8:30 a.m., followed by a 5K at 9 a.m.), and it's taken a while to recover. I averaged closed to 150 miles/month last year, but ended January with just 88. February wasn't much better at 103, and even March failed to measure up to last year. I'm currently at 447 miles cumulative for the year, which projects to just under 1500. Assuming no other injuries, I figure on ramping up the mileage, but finding another 200 miles in the next 7 months isn't exactly trivial.

On the top 10% finishes, I'm basically on track if you do some rounding... 3/48, 9/162, 16/154,  3/46, 3/35, and 4/97. That includes two #1 masters and three #2 masters finishes.

The time goals are going to be really hard to crack, though. I've got one 5K under 21 minutes (well, it would have been under 21 minutes except the race distance came out to 3.18 miles), so I'm half a minute behind my peak last year, and I'd have to cut another 30+ seconds from that to reach this year's 5K goal. Still, summer's just about here, so we'll see if more quality running sessions will help me improve enough.

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