Wikipedia actually has an entry. I’ll save you the look up.
“A New Year’s resolution is a commitment to a personal goal that an individual makes to a project or the reforming of a habit, often a lifestyle change that is generally interpreted as advantageous. The name comes from the fact that these commitments normally go into effect on New Year’s Day.”
Popular goals are to improve health by losing weight and exercise more.” I expect to see lots of foot traffic on my most training courses. At least until February.
The Wikipedia article quotes a website named Quirkology which says “while 52% of participants in a resolution study were confident of success with their goals, only 12% actually achieved their goals. Men achieved their goal 22% more often when they engaged in goal setting, while women succeeded 10% more when they made their goals public and got support from their friends.”
It’s pretty common in the running community to announce which races you doing next. It might be the most common question asked during a training run, “Are you training for something?” While I answer this question honestly, I tend to keep my running plans to myself in order to keep the pressure to a minimum. It’s one thing to tell another runner what your plans are and another thing entirely to make a public announcement. I’ve learned that I function best when I’m the only one applying pressure on myself. Also, sometimes training just doesn’t work out like you wanted and you aren’t at your peak or planned level on race day. Finances, starting new jobs, keeping old jobs, kids playing on traveling sport teams, etc. It’s often hard to get in all the training necessary to perform well in a 50 mile race. And it’s always hard to get in all the quality training necessary.
That said here’s my very tentative schedule for the first half of 2011. Most of these will find me as a participant without a specific goal other than getting in a good training run or testing out some new gear maybe even seeing an eagle this year. I have specific goals for two races in particular, Bull Run Run 50 and the Fredericton marathon. My PR at Bull Run is 7:19 (8:47 pace), I would like to run close to 7 hours, which would be an 8:24 pace. For the Fredericton marathon I would like to run as near to 3 hours (which is my marathon PR) as I can.
January
15 & 16 - VHTRC MLK weekend training runs or JFK 20
23 - Eagle run
February
12 - TWOT or Holiday Lake 50K+
20 - Geo. Washington Birthday marathon
26 - Hashawha Hills 50K
March
6 - Catawba Run-About
7 - B&A Trail marathon
12 - Elizabeth Furnace 50K
13 - Lower Potomac River marathon
26 - Terrapin Mtn 50K
April
3 - Cherry Blossom 10 miler
9 - Bull Run Run 50 miler
23 - Lake Waramaug 50K or 50 miler, or Promiseland 50K
May
8 - Fredericton marathon
June
4 - Old Dominion 100
18 - Highlands Sky 40 miler
Just like Grimm’s Fairy Tales, this is written in black ink…if you don’t count the electronic part.
